Perhaps
we ought to begin this investigation into the deviations of his life by evoking
the problem of human memory. In his later years, summing up the whole course of
his existence in a long lyric, he wrote the following lines:

As
my hair grew longer,

my fortunes travelled a rough road:

The
family line in ruins,

the blue sea a mulberry grove.

Later
readers have not usually considered those lines to be the transposition into
poetry of any actual experience. At most they have assumed that they were
inspired by some childhood event he learned about in his adult years, a
pseudo-memory as it were, an analogy fabricated to harmonize with the assumed
course of his life's history.

Such
theories may satisfy those who prefer an entertaining folk-tale to the actual
details of a man's real life. For them, it is unthinkable that he might have
retained any actual memories of his family or origins before that fateful
moment, so often chronicled, when he won first prize in a rural poetry-contest
at the age of nineteen. That way the legend could be given a dramatic and
really effective starting-point.

Unfortunately,
the realities of life rarely if ever correspond to the demands of such
fabulations. Generally received opinion notwithstanding, his memory actually
stretched much further back into the past than is normally the case.

In
particular, even when his life was almost done, at the end when he was weary
and alone, he could recall the events of a certain evening late in the year in
which he turned four as vividly as if they were just then happening before his
eyes: that fateful night when his life was fundamentally transformed, as if the
blue sea had indeed suddenly been turned into a mulberry grove.

He
was only a child, of course, but during the last few days he had become vaguely
aware of an extraordinary atmosphere brooding over the house.

The
servants who had until then filled their home with a constant presence seemed
visibly to have diminished in number, while those who remained no longer worked
but stood in corners endlessly whispering together about something.

It
was only an uncertain memory, but it seemed that sometimes words like
"rebellion" and "his Lordship" could be heard emerging from
the whispers. Among those days' strange memories was one of his father, who
normally remained in his quarters, lying down more often than sitting up,
busily going about on visits solemnly dressed in formal attire.

That
day too his father had listened to a message that a steward, rushing in from
somewhere, had whispered, and then gone out without bothering to adjust his
dress, walking with quick steps down the already darkening street. More than
anything else, the sight of his father's retreating figure made the atmosphere
he sensed about the house seem darker and heavier, as if there was about to be
a shattering explosion.

That
was why, although night had fallen, he did not go across to the room he shared
with his elder brother in the outer quarters, but lingered on in the women's
rooms (*). No supper was brought in, but he stayed there beside his mother who
was shivering slightly as she hugged and rocked his tiny new-born brother.

He
might have been rather more sensitive than other children but still he was only
four. Inevitably, as the evening wore on, despite the ominous trembling he
could feel through the hem of his mother's skirts that he was grasping, he
began to doze.

It
was almost as if he had invited sleep to come in an attempt to escape from the
suffocating stillness that reigned in the house and the incomprehensible
suspense, but that must have been an idea he introduced and adjusted when he
was older.

His
father returned just as he was about to give up the fight against sleep and
stretch out with his head pillowed on his mother's knees. A wave of cold air
from outside clinging to his robes came billowing round the room, as his father
addressed him curtly:

"Go
over to your room now, Pyong-yon."

In
the light of the guttering candle his father's face was so pale it looked
almost livid. It was such a fearful pallor that there could be no question of
answering back, let alone of wheedling to stay.

He
crossed the hall, dimly lit by a hanging lantern, with the wind making a
mournful sound as it brushed across the wide inner courtyard; he had already
taken off his slippers and the feel of the icy wood against the soles of his
bare feet would long remain one of that night's most vivid memories. His
brother Pyong-ha was sitting there alone in their room, which for no apparent
reason struck cold as he opened the door. Perhaps his big six-year-old brother
had different feelings to his?

"Is
father back?"

His
brother asked the question, looking at him as he came in, like someone roused
out of deep thoughts. Feeling for some reason that it would be wrong to reply
in words, he simply nodded silently. Perhaps what he was feeling had
communicated itself to his brother and for some time he did not speak. But his
brother seemed to have something he needed to say, words that he could not
endure to keep bottled up inside him.

"It
seems half the servants have already run away."

His
brother spoke in a whisper, like someone revealing a great secret. It was
something he had already realized to some degree, but as soon as his brother
spoke he found himself longing to know the reason for it.

"Why
have they run away? What reason is there for the servants to leave?"

He
too lowered his voice; his brother seemed perplexed for a moment. In
retrospect, his perplexity may have come from a feeling that he knew why but
should not say it, or that if he spoke his brother might not understand; there
was an element of sibling superiority involved.

A
moment later, his brother seemed to have made up his mind and was going to
explain; but there was not a single word that he remembered having heard. For
just as his brother was about to speak, their mother's sobbing voice rang
abruptly across the courtyard.

The
two of them suddenly seemed to have matured by several years; as they listened
in anxious silence, their mother's sobs gradually changed into a muffled
keening. But almost at once the bedroom door opened, then slammed shut in
response to their father's low command, and the sound of their mother's weeping
began slowly to diminish.

Once
again an ominous silence pressed heavily on the household. Becoming for no
apparent reason more serious than ever, the brothers strained their ears
towards the inner quarters, but the only sound that reached them was from time
to time the squeak of a wardrobe hinge or the creak of a drawer being opened
then shut.

A
little later they heard their mother's footsteps crossing the hall. When she
opened the door, her face showed no trace of tears.

"Pyong-ha,
change into these."

She
thrust a set of thick clothing at his elder brother and then helped him change
too. He disliked the chill feeling as he put them on, but the quilted clothes
quickly grew warm.

Even
the slippers on his feet were double and padded; then, just as his mother was
winding a silk scarf about his head, the door opened again and their father
came in, his breath steaming white, together with Su-man.

Su-man
was a young servant who had been a palanquin-bearer in the days when their
grandfather had a position in the capital, but at present he was in charge of
looking after the men's quarters. While their father only looked haggard,
Su-man's dark red face was shining with an endless flow of tears, there was
something animal-like about it.

"When
you get to Koksan, tell Kim Song-su that he's no longer a serf (*) for our
family; he's a respectable free citizen now. And tell him that the land there
doesn't belong to me any more, but to him. Tell him, too, not to make too much
of a burden of raising these two boys. Just so long as they survive, and I'm
not guilty of putting an end to the family line: I can't hope for more."

Their
father repeated once more to Su-man instructions that he seemed already to have
given him several times before, then turned and looked at the two brothers.

"You
don't belong to an influential family any longer; you're no longer my sons.
From now on you're going to live as the sons of Kim Song-su, a freed serf.
You're on your way home to Koksan in Hwanghae Province. You're returning after
a visit to your mother's family and you're the nephews of Chon Su-man here. Do you
understand?"

There
was something moist about their father's voice, unlike its usual tone. He
stopped speaking and they all waited. A moment later he cleared his throat and
regained his habitual serenity.

"Do
you understand? Your father is Kim Song-su of Koksan district in Hwanghae
Province. You've been visiting your mother's family in Yongin and now you're on
your way back home with your uncle, you're going to celebrate the New Year
there. In future you must never regard your father's or grandfather's name as
your own."

On
reflection, their father cannot have been even thirty at the time. How to
explain the composure he showed while taking his leave of those two young sons
that he would probably never see again, at an age when it is no easy thing to control
one's emotions? Was it due to his strong self-control? Or the dignity expected
of even a run-of-the-mill gentleman? Or did he secretly believe, despite what
he said, that they would sooner or later be reunited?

In
any case, the solemnity and dignity conveyed by those words were sufficient to
overwhelm the young brothers. They had the feeling of some kind of ineluctable
destiny, not only from the strange atmosphere or this abrupt departure that
they had known nothing about, but above all from the way their father spoke.

The
father shot a glance at their mother. Despite all her efforts to restrain them,
tears were dripping down on to the ribbons on the front of her dress; then once
again he addressed Su-man. The main substance of his father's words also
remained in his memory until the very end of his life.

"You
don't have to come back. Once you've given these children over to Song-su, go
your own ways. I burned your serf's papers with those of Song-su, so no-one's
going to come after you. With the gold I gave you, you'll be able to find a
scrap of land, no matter where you go, big enough to feed and house yourself,
so you don't have to feel any loyalty to this fallen family."

This
was his father as he used to be, not on the days when he couldn't take any more
and stayed lying down, but when he would sit high up in his room, well-groomed
and correct. The only memory of his father he preserved from before then was of
times when, if he made even a little noise playing in the garden of the men's
quarters, a window would slide open and a hand silently wave him away. If they
had separated then and there, he would probably have remembered his father in
later times for his coldness.

But
his father was incapable of keeping his heart-broken feelings hidden to the
end. It was just as he was being carried on Su-man's back through the middle
gate:

Those
few words, blurted out at the last moment after he had followed them as far as
he intended, sounded more pathetic than any tears. Their mother's sobbing burst
out again behind his father as he spoke; it followed them for a while along the
road.

2.

He
could never identify precisely the emotion that dominated him that evening. No
matter how hard he racked his memories in later years, he could find no sign
that he had begged or shed tears in an effort not to go, as he was parted from
his father and mother.

He
was only four; suddenly he was separated from his parents, without knowing why,
and sent off to an unknown destination; with a feeling moreover that he might
never see them again. . . .

Strange
though it may seem, perhaps a fear of death had seized his infant soul at that
moment. Had he not instinctively realized, although he had never heard anyone
talk about dying, that what he was escaping from was precisely that thing
called death?

He
may have been terrified of something, but it seemed to be by no means as
precise a fear as that which his brother Pyong-ha was feeling. His brother had
been following Su-man without a word as he almost ran along in his effort to
get away from that neighbourhood, carrying the younger boy on his back. As they
followed the dark streets, he suddenly asked:

"Why
do we have to run away like this?"

"Because.
. .young master. . ."

Su-man
stopped abruptly and restrained his harsh breathing, while hesitating to give a
clear answer. Their father's words had obviously not yet become real for his
brother, he spoke as if nothing had changed, demanding a reply:

"Tell
us. What's happening?"

"I'm
not sure that you're old enough to understand, young masters."

"I
order you to tell us."

"Do
you know that a great revolt has broken out in the north? The people in Pyongan
Province have plotted sedition, and have risen up. . . ."

"I
gathered as much from what the servants were whispering."

"But
his Lordship who was stationed in Sonchon. . ."

"What
has our grandfather done?"

"He
was captured by the rebels--and they say he surrendered to them. But you know
that anyone surrendering to rebels becomes a rebel, too."

"But
then why are we. . . ?"

Judging
by his questions his older brother was rather slow-witted for his age. Or else
the younger brother was far too bright. The only thing he had really studied
were the first thousand Chinese characters--which he had learned while playing
on his grandmother's lap. Yet by now he already knew: if someone becomes a
rebel, the punishment entails the destruction of that person's family for three
generations, and they were included in that.

In
the end, his brother stopped asking questions, after he had heard Su-man's
stammering replies:

"I
am very sorry, young master. . . by law, a rebel's whole family must be
exterminated. Young masters. . . now we're escaping from that. Your father's
orders. . . you haven't forgotten, have you? From now on, you're not your
father's sons any longer, not your grandfather's grandsons. Now you're going to
have to take the man we're on our way to. . . as you father, and live as his
sons. It's the only way. . . to save your lives."

When
they came close to Sowi Gate, the faint sound of the drum signal heralding the
lifting of the curfew reached their ears, but the endless winter's night was
still as dark as ever. Here and there around the gate fires had been lit and
even from a distance they could make out soldiers on watch, coming and going.
Su-man's whole body flinched, and he whispered in a tense voice:

"They
say there are people in collusion with the rebels in the city, too. Young
masters, let's get some rest in that tavern over there, and go on when day
breaks. The guards will most likely think it strange if they see someone trying
to slip out with young children at the crack of dawn. . ."

As
he led the brothers towards the tavern, he added with anapologetic air:

"From
now on, it's as your father ordered, I'm your maternal uncle. That means I'll
have to use the language of an uncle to you, and you must speak in honorific
forms to me. First we'll practice on the inn-keeper, then we'll do the same
with the soldiers as we leave the city."

Su-man's
words caused the younger boy, who was still perched on his back, no vexation,
not even the slightest stir of refusal, and his brother seemed to be feeling
the same. So when Su-man suddenly began to speak to them in disrespectful tones
as he entered the inn, his older brother followed along behind saying
"Yes, uncle; yes, sir," as if he had been doing it for a long time.
Perhaps his brother had glimpsed a few moments before, as he had, the substance
of the fear pursuing them in the firelight gleaming reflected on the points of
the soldiers' spears.

3.

Even
when he was very old, it took only a slight effort of the will for him to be
able to picture vividly every stage of their ten-day journey to Koksan. Sleet
had begun to fall as they were leaving Sowi Gate, and it became heavier at
about the time they took the road leading towards Koyang County, finally
turning into a real blizzard. After a night spent at the inn in Pyokjae, the
snow had still not stopped.

The
next day was the same, and the next. . . so that as they were approaching
Hwanghae Province, the whole world seemed to be covered with snow.

How
is it that snow has the power to make everything so generously, so marvellously
beautiful? Although the accumulation of several years' poor harvests had in the
end become a major factor in producing large-scale rebellion, the bright
snow-covered plains of Yonbaek had nothing arid or dreary about them.

If
he had not been so weary on account of the unreasonable pace Su-man kept up,
surely that pure white expanse of fields, so utterly beautiful, would long have
remained engraved in his mind.

When
they arrived at places where houses clustered together to form villages, his
memories were different again. The houses were obviously inhabited, yet the
villages seemed oddly cold and silent. As they passed through hamlets in which
not even a dog could be heard barking, the people they saw seemed afraid,
looking furtively at them and not speaking; even if they entered an inn, it was
rare indeed to find a smiling landlady or even a place capable of serving a
proper meal.

He
only learned later that large batallions of government forces had repeatedly
gone through those villages, stripping them bare after they had already been
impoverished by an accumulation of poor harvests and, worse still, by the
exactions of local magnates.

These
troops from the capital had been sent all over Pyongan Province as
reinforcements designed to cut off the rebel army's last lifeline. They had not
only emptied the villages of their cows, chickens, and dogs, they had not
hesitated to take even the few measures of grain that farmers had hidden to
tide themselves over until spring came.

Nothing,
though, could equal the vividness of his memories of the hardship the three of
them suffered along the way. Sturdy youth though he was, it was no easy task
for Su-man to bring those two children, one nearly five and one a few days
short of seven, on a winter journey of about eighty miles.

Pyong-ha,
the elder brother, bore up well for the first day, but on the second he began
to complain that his legs were hurting, and Su-man was obliged to carry them in
turns on his back the rest of the way. A long, tedious journey! When they were
being carried, their feet were cold, and when they were walking, their legs
hurt. The joy when, on rounding some mountain spur, they spied what looked like
a tavern in the distance, was greater than anything he ever felt in his later
years of wandering.

No
less than the hardship of walking was the anxiety they experienced each time
they were obliged to take a ferry or pass a checkpoint. To avoid the furtive
glances of a ferryman or the fierce stares of police and soldiers, they
sometimes chose to make a detour of three or four miles.

Even
after wandering had become a major feature of his life, he experienced a fit of
panic every time he was confronted with a river-crossing or a checkpoint; that
must surely have been because memories of his childhood lay buried somewhere
deep inside his soul.

Su-man
proved himself a wise and faithful servant, worthy of the charge entrusted to
him by their father. He carried the two brothers turn by turn on his back
without any pause for well over eighty miles, and brought them safely to Kim
Song-su in his home at Hwachon in Koksan just as the sun was setting, a few
days before the end of the year.

Su-man
handed the two over to Kim Song-su as if he was freeing himself of a precious
and weighty burden. Then he lay down and slept without a break for one whole
night and one whole day in a dirt-floored room, before he left.

He
only ever met Su-man once after that, more than twenty years later. That was
when he was wandering through Hamkyong Province, and Su-man was already an
elderly man living in a mountain village far up in Tongchon; there was no way
he could refuse his invitation. He spent five days with him; when he finally
left, Su-man accompanied him for more than a mile along the road, not once
letting go of the hem of his coat.

4.

Kim
Song-su proved to be fully Su-man's equal in faithfulness to his former master.
It was nearly the end of the Choson Era, a time when the social order was
breaking down completely, and a flood of alarming stories was circulating,
including some about a former serf who had secretly murdered his master when he
came on a visit from a distant place.

Certainly
Kim Song-su was in a position to act very differently toward the two brothers.
After all, the first thing he heard from Su-man on his arrival was that his
former master had burned his document of bondage, then he received legal
ownership of the plot of land he was cultivating. There was absolutely no legal
provision that could have forced him to accept the costly and troublesome task
of bringing up the two boys; even if there had been, his former master was by
then nothing more than a traitor's son, and as such lay outside the protection
of all laws and institutions.

Besides,
at that time the rebellion had still not been completely put down, so that if
he had taken the two brothers and handed them over to the local authorities, he
could have looked forward to a considerable reward.

In
fact though, Kim Song-su faithfully did as he had been requested without the
least hesitation, although it was highly doubtful whether his former master was
still alive by that time. Indeed, later, when they were back at their parents'
house, they often used to refer to him as their "Koksan father" with
considerable affection, no doubt because his faithful service had deeply
touched their infant hearts.

Still,
that could not protect them from suffering under the many kinds of deprivation
that they had to endure during the more than two years they spent in Koksan. To
be sure, Kim Song-su followed very precisely their father's orders; but on the
other hand, on account of the limited understanding only to be expected in a
serf who had always lived a humble life, he sometimes inflicted hurts on them,
and at times might have given them cause to harbour deep resentment.

One
thing they found infinitely displeasing in the early days was the way Kim
Song-su acted as if he really was their father. He insisted on being called
"Father," and even had the malicious pleasure of deceiving the old
woman who had recently come to live with him by presenting the brothers as his
own children by a first, deceased wife. Inevitably, too, doubts arose when they
found themselves forced to take off their silk clothes and cotton shoes and put
on instead unlined cotton jackets and straw shoes without socks, before being
sent out into the wintry yard to play.

They
felt deeply humiliated when they were given commoners' nick-names, Chomsey
and Kaettong in place of their aristocratic names. As he sat at the
meal-table picking at the coarse food he was not yet used to, Kim Song-su's
loud scolding used to make him grind his teeth.

He
had been prepared by Su-man during the journey, so he put up with Kim Song-su's
use of discourteous forms of language in addressing them; but when he poured
out torrents of vulgar abuse, irrespective of whether other people were around
or not, scolding them for some small faults, as if that country bumpkin were
their real father, it was so hurtful that his eyes would fill with tears.

There
were other painful things in living as Kim Song-su's sons, too. Three days
after coming there, they were given the job of lighting the fire to cook the
cattle-feed; ten days after that the whole task of chopping the fodder and
cooking the cattle-feed was passed on to them from the old woman.

When
spring came, Kim Song-su was off to the fields with the brothers; and he set to
work training them as farm-hands at a rather earlier age than other farming
fathers trained their sons.

Perhaps,
although they were still young, if the two brothers had realized a little more
clearly that the land Kim Song-su was cultivating really formed part of their
own lost inheritance, and that like Su-man he himself was nothing more than a
serf inherited from their grandparents' generation, it might have been hard for
them to accept such treatment from him without accumulating deep feelings of
resentment.

More
than that, if their childish hearts had not been dominated, instictively, by
fear of a death which seemed more terrible still by reason of its abstract
quality, or if they had made any other choice, those two upper-class children
would almost certainly never have endured their sudden fall into utter misery,
after beginning life in the midst of so much loving care and devoted service.

Kim
Song-su, though, was convinced that such treatment was the only way to protect
the boys from his neighbours' suspicion, and fortunately they vaguely
recognized his sincerity in acting as he did, so that nothing irreparable happened.
There was also another occasion when Kim Song-su was able at least temporarily
to play a paternal role in the two brothers' memories.

It
occurred in the early spring, just over two years after their arrival in
Koksan. Kim Song-su, who could not tell a T from a hammer, one day suddenly
took the two boys along to enrol them in the village school. His was a tight
enough situation, what with residence taxes, defence tax, and goodness knows
what else to be paid; sending them to school on top of that, where the basic
charge alone was two sacks of rice, was near-madness in the eyes of his
neighbours.

Kim
Song-su never explained clearly, even later, why that new idea suddenly came to
him. All things duly considered, perhaps he had heard a report that the authorities
had in the end decided to spare the family; his action may also have been
prompted by a feeling that he had not shown enough gratitude for his former
master's generosity.

If
really he acted out of a realization that a true repayment for generosity would
mean not merely saving the brothers' lives but training their minds, to prepare
them for the recovery of their family's former honour, that can only be
considered a sign of a very considerable maturity on the part of Kim Song-su,
who had after all spent his whole life as someone else's serf.

5.

In
the comic poems he wrote later, he is all the time mocking and making fun of
the teachers at village schools. If you think for a moment, it is not hard to
guess where his malice and contempt towards them came from.

In
the course of the later Choson period the village schools had gradually
declined, while still preserving their status as the chief institutions for the
transmission of learning; they were generally staffed by local scholars who for
one reason or another had been eliminated from the mainstream of promotion in
society, who were incapable of rising higher on the social scale than the
general certificate of learning. The fact of the matter was that the schools
had deteriorated from their original function, and were now merely the easiest,
indeed almost the only means by which lower-class intellectuals could make a
living.

As
the civil-service examination system was gradually corrupted by powerful clan
interests, that degradation became far more severe. The lesser gentry, those
having no connections with powerful families and without the financial means to
bribe the examiners, gave up all hope of a career in the administration;
instead, they went out into every rural nook and cranny to set up schools where
they survived by selling their half-baked learning for next to nothing.

Then
when the school-master went to collect his year's tuition fee, which was fixed
at the not so excessive amount of "one sack of rice and one copper
penny," from the fathers of his pupils (most of them were low-ranking
public officials), as often as not they would roll up their sleeves, frown and
swear, and he ended up fleeing from the village "as if he had a tiger
behind him." Such was the age he was living in, it was inevitable that he
should be or less influenced by that same kind of social attitude.

The
way in which he was in direct competition with those school-masters during his
adult life, largely spent wandering from place to place, may very largely explain
his ill-will towards them. Those teachers were mostly wandering scholars like
himself; usually they would make a contract and stay between six months and one
year in a place; even if the local people were highly satisfied, it was almost
unknown for one to last more than three years.

As
a result, when he entered a village it was only natural that the local
schoolmaster should see him as a potential rival; that is why there were so
many instances when he encountered quite uncalled-for hostility or surliness.
As a matter of fact, from time to time he stayed on in a place and performed
the functions of a teacher himself.

On
the other hand, no matter what village in what remote valley he arrived at, the
educated person he could most easily search out was precisely the local
school-master. Wherever he went he had necessarily at first to depend on the
understanding and goodwill of the literate people he might find, which meant he
was obliged to visit them first, but such a circumstance only helped foster his
ill-will. For it is sure that if you have frequent encounters with members of
one particular class, especially if you are looking to them for some kind of
help at a time when everyone is experiencing hardship, you are obviously very
often going to receive painful mistreatment at their hands.

His
poetry, too, for which he very soon acquired a high reputation, was equally a
cause of his deep contempt for those teachers. The mere sight of them was bound
to be both revolting and comic, as they went swaggering around before the
ignorant peasants, poetry and learning dangling from their noses, while really
all they had was a little learning, a meagre talent, and low minds.

But
one of the main factors, one that cannot be excluded from the reasons
underlying his scorn and contempt for village teachers, is the negative
impression he received from the master at the school there in Koksan. On the
day Kim Song-su took them along to the school, the first question the master
asked, all goatee beard and mousy eyes, was how soon he could pay half the
fees.

When
Kim Song-su asked him to wait three months, the next question was about his
standard of living, and the next about where his family was from. He did not
even once glance at the two brothers, or enquire about what they had learned or
if they could write. Perhaps because he was still very young, much had grown
hazy in the course of the last two years, but he could not detect the slightest
trace of a scholar-gentleman's mien in that teacher, as he recalled it from still
lingering memories of the scholars who had come visiting the guest rooms in
their former home.

It
was no different on the second day, when they had been squeezed in among the
other pupils. Taking them for the children of poor peasants, the teacher placed
them in the most remote corner, did not even try to find out anything about
them, and forced them both to work through the primer from the beginning. Now
the younger brother already knew most of its contents at least vaguely, while
the elder of the two had almost completely mastered the book back in their old
home.

Yet
that teacher, furious whether they knew the answers or not, forced them to
stick with the same primer until they left Koksan six months later. At a guess,
he probably wanted to wait until there were other pupils ready to start the
elementary level with them.

That
master's joys and wraths, his favours and repudiations had nothing to do with
how much or little talent or application a pupil displayed. If a piece of quite
indifferent writing was produced by the son of some well-heeled local gentleman
holding a modest post in the administration, it was glorified as "a fine
composition," the child became "an infant prodigy!"Whereas if boys of poor commoners like
the two brothers so much as stumbled over one insignificant phrase in reciting
their lesson, he would explode into a fury as violent as if he had just
suffered some kind of deep betrayal, lashing out with his cane.

To
say nothing of the greed that kept that master's fleshy lips for ever on the
move, the servile obsequiousness he showed before minor local dignitaries who
had bought themselves sinecures with impressive-sounding titles, as well as the
little learning manifested by his outbursts of anger if he could not find an
answer to a boy's question. . . .

All
these various failings of their master surely underlie the jaundiced view he
later showed towards school-masters in general; they were the cause of a revolt
at the time, too. The two brothers soon lost all pleasure in the studies they
had so eagerly begun, using every pretext to stay away from classes. It almost
seems as though he was already beginning to cultivate the first tender shoots
of what was later to become his complete alienation from the ways of society.

Fortunately,
this early deviation on the part of the brothers was not destined to last for
long. It was an early summer day that year. Once again, the two boys had got
one of their school-fellows living nearby to transmit a plausible-sounding
excuse for their absence, then they had set off for the banks of the South
River just below Hwachon.

Early
as it was, they played in the water like two typical country lads, one now six
and the other nine, going dashing after swarms of minnows where the stream
narrowed, then rummaging through the waterside thickets in quest of birds-eggs.
As midday drew near, though, they began to be bored with one thing after
another. The sun was becoming increasingly fierce, too, so that they could no
longer play beside the river where they had no shade.

They
were forced to shift their playground up under the willows on the embankment.
They were longing to go back home but it was still too early for that. Their
school-master always ended lessons late, realizing that he only had to keep the
boys sitting in the school-room for a long time for their families to be
convinced that he was a first-class teacher.

Pyong-ha
seemed to have worn himself out playing; no sooner had they moved into the
shade than he lay down, cradled his head on one arm, and went to sleep.

Leaning
against a tree with no special thought in mind, the younger brother gazed up at
the billowing summer clouds as they unfolded in the blue sky overhead. The
clouds he really liked best of all were those that went streaming restlessly
across the sky in the breezes of autumn, but now he came to observe them
quietly, these early summer clouds had their own kind of beauty, fashioning
themselves now into flower buds, now into mountain ranges.

He
was still only seven, though, and like any other child he could never stand
still for a moment, the same was true of his thoughts. He suddenly wearied of
looking at the clouds. In a flash, his mind turned to his own situation and
suddenly he was longing for his parents, not knowing if they were alive or
dead. Memories of his early childhood arose confusedly and for no particular
reason he recalled their old home. It seemed palatial now, with servants
hurrying busily to and fro.

He
was just sinking into a strange state of melancholy musing when suddenly Kim
Song-su seemed to come rising out of the ground and was standing there in the
shadow of the trees. He had obviously heard what they were up to and had come
running; without any warning he woke Pyong-ha with a box on the ear then,
holding them by the scruff of the neck, one in each hand, he began to roar.

"Scoundrels!
Good for nothing scoundrels! Is this your idea of school? Here, by the river?
You dare go skiving off in the middle of classes when your father is breaking
his back working to send you there?"

All
the while he was being shaken by the neck, yet he could not help noticing out
of one corner of his eye how a group of women, who had been washing clothes in
the river not far away, were all laughing and screwing up their eyes tightly as
if to say, "It serves you right!" Presumably one of them, finishing
her washing early, had gone and dropped a hint to the old woman who lived with
Kim Song-su.

Given
what had happened, Kim Song-su duly did everything that a father is expected to
do in such circumstances. As he dragged them home like two little puppies he
poured out a stream of reproaches in a loud voice, then began to lament his
fate, beating his breast at the same time.

He
continued in the same vein once they got home. He promptly sent everyone away,
even the old woman, and closed the brushwood gate at the entry to the yard,
breathing hard as if he was preparing to do something really terrible; small
though he was, he was seized with a sudden panic. Until now Kim Song-su had
never once raised a hand to them, though he often gave them a good lashing with
his tongue; he had never felt afraid of him before. At present, however, he
seemed to have become another man. As he drove them indoors and followed them
still shouting loudly enough for all the neighbours to hear, the two brothers
felt quite certain that they were about to be given a really good whipping on
the backside.

What
happened next was completely unexpected. Once the door to the room was closed
and bolted, Kim Song-su suddenly stopped shouting and began to sob. Soon tears
were streaming down his wrinkled cheeks as he gazed at the two brothers.

"Young
masters! It's not right! Do you really think you have nothing else to look
forward to in life than to grow up as the children of a poor wretch like me? I
may only be an ignorant bondsman, but I know what a gentleman's duty is. If you
don't study, how will you ever be able to restore your family to its former
dignity? Who is going to make amends for the bitter fate his noble Lordship
underwent? Who is going to comfort the souls of our young Master and Mistress
who left this world so full of chagrin? Young masters, what you are doing is
wrong. Just being alive is not all there is to life. I beg you, have some
consideration for this old heart of mine; my only wish is to see our former
master's family happily restored before I die."

It
was the only time in all the three years they spent together that Kim Song-su
gave any glimpse of the almost religious hope buried deep in his inmost heart.
He himself was scarcely old enough to be able to grasp fully everything that
Kim Song-su had said, but at least the sincere devotion underlying his words
communicated itself to him. Seen from the perspective of the poet he later
became, the occasion may perhaps seem rather mundane, yet that was probably the
first time in his life that he realized just how essential it was for him to
study.

6.

From
the moment that he saw Kim Song-su's tears, he strove hard to adjust to the
village school, if it was at all possible. The words are really too
pretentious, since he was still barely seven years old, but he tried to develop
a conscious afinity for study. He set out with a new earnestness to master the
primer of Chinese characters, that had so bored him before, and made every
effort to show affection for his infinitely disagreeable teacher.

The
intention was admirable, but nothing turned out as he had hoped. The
schoolmaster, with his goat's beard and mousey eyes, was no less cold than
before, while to the other boys he was still merely Kaettong, the former serf's
kid. It didn't matter how hard he tried, it made no difference; the wounds in
his heart simply grew deeper.

Until
one day their father arrived! The father they thought they would never see
again suddenly walked into Kim Song-su's yard, with the setting sun in his
back! It was early in the autumn, three years after their separation.

"My
boys, we can go home! You can once again live in the world as the sons of your
real father and mother."

He
looked haggard, seeming ten years older than when they had parted; he spoke
only after holding the boys to his breast and weeping silently for a time. It
was the same as on the evening they had left home, the words were brief, with
no lengthy explanations; yet he felt the fear of death that had been stubbornly
lodged somewhere deep inside him suddenly melt and vanish.

He
had set them beside him and was caressing their backs by turns, as if to show
how precious they were, when Kim Song-su rushed in, bellowing like an ox,
having heard the news, and fell prostrate before their father. The emotion in
that encounter between master and servant was no less than that of the reunion
of father and sons.

"The
authorities issued a most generous pardon last summer. I was intending to come
and fetch the boys then, but my health was not up to it, and I was
delayed."

After
briefly expressing his thanks to Kim Song-su, he told him quite simply what had
happened in the meantime. Kim Song-su was curious and kept asking more
questions, snuffling noisily the while, so that he was able to learn many
things.

They
heard how their father and mother had gone into hiding, moving from place to
place until they finally settled at Yoju, where they were now living; how their
baby brother Pyong-ho was dead, as was their grandmother, who had gone back to
her old family home and died broken-hearted; how at last extermination had been
avoided thanks to the fact that their grandfather was in the direct line of the
Changdong Kims.

Equally
moving, as soon as all the news had been told, Kim Song-su produced the deeds
to his land that he had received from Su-man and offered them to his former
master. Their father's integrity revealed itself in high and cutting tones:

"Not
at all, you have amply repaid me by taking care of these children. If there is
any giving to be done, I am the one who should be doing it."

A
little later he even ordered him to stop treating him as "master" in
speaking to him.

"You
are a free citizen now. Don't humble yourself so much. After all, I'm merely
the survivor of a fallen family. . . I don't know if we shall ever meet again,
but from now on we meet as social equals."

Yet
how strange are the tricks of fickle memory! Perhaps the return of his father
had restored him to a normal childhood state; or the realisation that death was
no longer pursuing him had broken the tension he had been living under? At any
rate, that was the last clear-cut memory he preserved of his time at Koksan. He
vaguely recalled that Kim Song-su prevented his father from leaving on the next
day, as he was intending, and he also seemed to have seen him wrap something up
and offer it to his father who again refused to take it, but it was all like a
long-ago dream, nothing more.

He
retained no particular memory of what road they took as they walked to Yoju.
The only thing he recalled was a fleeting moment as they were passing beside a
mountain, when his brother noticed a flaming red maple and asked the name of
the place. His father's reply passed into the memory's slow processes of recall
and only rose to the surface much later:

"This
is Kuwol San, the Mountain of the Ninth Moon, in Hwanghae Province."

7.

At
this point it may be helpful to summarize briefly what befell his family during
those years, in the terms in which society at large has recorded them.

When
he was four years old his grandfather, Kim Ik-sun, who was in charge of the
garrison at Sonchon, was captured by the rebel army led by Hong Kyong-rae and
surrendered to them. That was in the last month of the eleventh year of king
Sunjo, 1811. In the first month of the following year, Sonchon was recaptured
by government forces and Kim Ik-sun, who had remained in Hong Kyong-rae's camp,
was taken prisoner again, this time as a traitor, by the government army.

Kim
Ik-sun was transferred to prison and in the third month of that year he was
drawn and quartered. During the two years separating his arrest by the
government troops and the official measures that spared the family from
extermination, they were obliged to live in hiding, dispersed in various
localities.

While
he was being brought up by Kim Song-su in Koksan, in Hwanghae Province, his
parents with his baby brother lived in hiding, first briefly in Yangju and then
in Yoju. There must have been some reason for their choice of Yoju, of all
places, but none has ever been discovered.

Their
father's dream of fetching back the two sons at all costs, so reuniting the
family, had arisen after the royal court had ruled that the descendants should
not be held accountable for their ancestor's crimes, thanks to the mediation of
powerful members of their Changdong Kim family. First their father went to
Hwanghae Province and brought him back with his older brother Pyong-ha, but it
was no easy affair to raise up again a family that had been once brought down.

It
may well be that their father's action in bringing them to Yoju arose from
plans he had made for a comeback, basing himself on a place where he was
already established. But Yoju was not the kind of place where they could put
down lasting roots. In the meantime, the few objects of value that they had
been able to take with them on their flight were all gone, and the few family
connections they had were no help to the descendants of a traitor.

It
looks as though his father had nourished some hopes because he was one of the
Changdong Kims, and because he still had property in Seoul. But while the
sentence of extermination was lifted, the family estates remained confiscated
and the Kims felt no goodwill towards kinsmen who had compromised their
political career.

A
few months of frequent visits to Seoul had brought their father nothing but the
hurt of endless rebuffs and frustrations, so eventually he ceased going there.

Once
it became clear that nothing was going as he had hoped, his father resolved to
leave Yoju. In order to secure immediate necessities, he had no choice but to
go somewhere where he could find help of some kind.

"Let's
try Kapyong. I have a few acquaintances there; who knows, perhaps they may help
us. If not, I can settle somewhere and do school-teaching."

That
was what his father said to his mother one day, as he came in from making
visits, ignoring his presence. So they left the clear waters of Ipo, before
they had spent even one year living beside the ferry-landing there.

8.

His
hazy path, still so unclear to him, now led towards Kapyong. He was only eight
years old, yet already he was experiencing a third change of home. But because
this time he set out under the protection of his parents for a destination that
was not far away, he preserved no special memories of the move.

It
must have been some time in the third or fourth month of the year. His father
observed the formal segregation of the sexes and walked some way ahead, while
he and his older brother followed on behind with various bundles on their
backs, together with their mother who was carrying their newly-born little
brother Pyong-du strapped to her back and a large bundle on her head. Their
father looked utterly wretched, despite the formal hat and dress he was
wearing; already his sickly complexion was obvious.

As
he walked on ahead he would stop occasionally, but it seemed that it was
because he was having difficulty in breathing, rather than because he was
waiting for the three of them to catch him up.

There
was just one strange memory of their journey that remained engraved in his
memory even long afterwards; it happened when they had been on the road for
about half a day.

They
were on an uphill path that ran alongside a stream; just where a steep climb
began the boys and their mother decided to rest for a moment; they put their
bundles down. Their father, who was not carrying anything, walked on swinging
his arms then halted silently about halfway up the slope, perhaps realizing
that they were not following him. From below, having got his breath back and
wiped the sweat from his face, he happened to look up at his father.

It
must have been the effect of the late spring haze and the strong breeze that
was catching at his coat, for as his father stood there with his hands clasped
behind his back, gazing into the stream, he had the impression that he was
about to rise into the air. At the same time, possibly on account of the blue
sky behind him, the shabby coat seemed to be shining white and incredibly
bright.

"Ah,
now father's going to fly away!"

He
found himself murmuring words to that effect inwardly: perhaps that
extraordinary feeling was a form of premonition of his father's imminent death.

Life
at Kapyong was grim. Around sunset on the following day they arrived at the
place their father had in mind and the family unpacked their belongings in one
room of a royal tomb-keeper's isolated hovel. Their mother took from her finger
a jade ring, her last remaining piece of jewelry, and exchanged it for rice
while he and his brother climbed a hill, that was all dusty from the springtime
drought, to gather firewood.

The
forty or so miles walk seemed to have been too much for their father; after two
days in bed he got up, his face gaunt and emaciated, and went to pay visits to
those people he thought might help them. For five days, he went around the
village and its vicinity but apparently he failed to find the friendship and
sympathy he had been counting on. Just once, a sturdy farm-hand came bringing a
sack of barley, saying it was from a royal tomb-keeper who lived on the other
side of the hill, that was all.

When
they were leaving Yoju, their father had said to his wife that if everything
else failed, he could always try teaching, but even that proved not to be so
easy. He was not yet thirty years old, and with all the memories he still
preserved of life as the only son of a powerful family, for whom even the sky
was not too high, it was too early to earn a living by work that disgraced
aristocrats only turned too as a last resort.

Besides,
the old widower who was firmly entrenched at the village school, having nowhere
else to go, was determined to drive out occasional competitors at all costs.
Memories of this man too must have contributed their share to his later
ill-will towards village school-masters.

By
then, in any case, his father had become so dreadfully haggard that his
worsening health must have rendered impossible any thought of making a living
as a schoolmaster. For the last few years, he had resisted with the energy that
is born of despair, but during that time chronic consumption had been
ceaselessly gnawing at his body, until now he had virtually reached the end of
the road.

His
relief at hearing of the lifting of the death sentence, the relief of hearing
that they were no longer being actively pursued, had only served to stimulate
the progress of the disease. By the time summer came, he could hardly take care
of himself, let alone teach children.

As
autumn came, the family experienced briefly some bright, cheerful days. Perhaps
as a harvest-time act of kindness, a former acquaintance of their father's, who
had been ignoring them, sent over two sacks of rice; he recovered for a moment
after suffering all through the summer. For a few days his spirits were high,
he kept talking about how he would open a school, and even began to teach the
Elementary Learning (*) to the two brothers, his first pupils.

Alas,
the sun seems to grow larger as it sets, and this was nothing more than the
final brief flaming of their father's life while it broke its bonds with this
earth. Before ever the autumn came to an end the fire went out and it was all
over.

Near
midnight on the twentieth day of the tenth month, their father coughed up what
seemed a gallon of blood and expired in the hovel where they had been staying.
That very day he had been called to the house of a local squire named Yun, in
the neighboring village, who was looking for a private tutor, and he had
returned home pleasantly drunk.

Once
the hurried funeral was over and their father was buried in the cold ground,
their mother tried to put down roots in Kapyong, where they had settled. It
really seemed she might be able to scrape a living there and bring up her three
sons one way or another, if only she could rid herself of her prickly family
pride, for they had made some friends in the area who had formed a good opinion
of her.

However,
there was to be no lasting connection between their family and Kapyong. The old
school-master, who had worked so hard to drive their father away, had finally
discovered who they were. The rumours the master had begun to spread while
their father was still alive were no longer needed, but there was no stopping
them now, even if he had wanted to.

The
mere words "a traitor's descendants" were enough to strike terror
into ignorant countryfolk. The four of them had no choice but to leave the
place.

9.

"A
traitor's descendants" . . . what did those words mean for him as he grew
up?

For
a while, from the moment he set out for Koksan on Su-man's back until the day
their father came to fetch them, those words represented the very negation of
life itself. Even though he was too young really to understand what death was,
night after night he was woken up by nightmares about dying.

Later,
for a while the words became almost meaningless, in the period they spent in
Yoju and Kapyong, when their parents offered shelter, albeit not a perfect one,
and he could regain some measure of childhood simplicity. That was the time
when he came to understand that not being denied the right to live and being
granted the right to live amounted to one and the same thing.

Nonetheless,
by the time they left Kapyong, those words had gradually begun once again to
take on something of their old meaning, rather like an ill-omened charm. For
slowly he began to sense from his mother's desperate struggle to go on living
with her young sons that even though life itself might not be denied them
directly, if their living conditions became too difficult then life itself
could be imperilled.

The
entire retaliatory system against treason was tenacious and thorough, even when
it deigned to show a degree of leniency. The royal court might have decided
against carrying out the penalty directly, but that by no means meant that the
system as such had abandoned its malice towards them.

The
ideology of the system, long inculcated through various pedagogical methods,
together with the examples of fearful punishment frequently meted out on
traitors, had raised people's responses to an almost instinctive level. Not
only the classes who shared in the structures and advantages of society, but
even those who were the victims of those structures, had been conditioned to
shudder instinctively at the very word "traitor" and to consider
treason as some kind of deadly disease that could be caught merely by being in
the proximity of the descendants of such a person.

If
society as a whole thought and felt in that way, inevitably the descendants of
traitors who became the targets of those attitudes suffered fatal consequences
in their actual lives. Given humanity's gregarious needs, merely being excluded
from society could sometimes be a crueler sanction than any direct punishment
would have been.

The
inertia of the system was also a problem, its inability to come to terms
quickly with a decision-maker's act of leniency. The reason was that while
those at the top might come to some decision, the lower levels of the administration
were often inclined to follow blindly the system's instinct for
self-preservation. That mainly manifested itself in an exact execution of the
law; but sometimes while externally it seemed that decisions from above were
being faithfully followed, in actual fact some kind of invisible sanction was
being inflicted. For example, they might withhold from specific people, or only
reluctantly grant, things that theoretically the social system guaranteed
equally for all, be it material profit or such social benefits as the
protection of the law; from the viewpoint of the victims the results could be
more dreadful than active deprivation.

Such
a retaliation, practiced by the whole system, was what he painfully experienced
as he grew up, while moving from Kapyong to Pyongchang, from Pyongchang to
Yongwol, then from Yongwol to a villlage in a remote mountain valley. There was
no precise department or law threatening their lives, yet the wretched living
conditions that society silently imposed on them were similar in their effects
to a direct threat.

Long
afterwards, when he was already grown up, he sometimes wondered whether the
leniency they had enjoyed--a particular favour indeed for those times, a whole
family exempted from an extended death sentence--had not in fact been intended
to substitute an indirect and gradually inflicted social death for the
immediate physical death demanded by the law.

It
was to avoid such a retaliation by the system that their mother took the three
brothers to live in remote mountain villages where their origin might perhaps
be more easily kept hidden. Yet no matter how they covered their traces, after
a few years of life in out-of-the-way hamlets in Kangwon Province someone
always found out about their family's history and the negative consequences
began again.

This
was what happened in Pyongchang. Their mother had no resources except what she
could earn by selling her abilty to work; she could hope to earn the best
income by her needle, and at last a favourable opportunity presented itself.
She was employed as a temporary seamstress in the house of a former clerk in
the royal library who had retired early and come back to live in his childhood
village.

It
was three years since they had left Kapyong; for the brothers it was a time of
plenty and comfort coming after long months when they had been more often
hungry than full, more often shivering with cold than warm and snug. They only
had a single room in a farm shed, but during those few months they were never
hungry or cold.

Their
mother always came home late in the evening, but one day, after she had been
working in that family for less than half a year, she arrived back home at
noontime.

"If
there was a traitor, it was him, your grandfather; he was the one! What wrong
have we done? The state let us go on living, so why. . ."

She
came in, sat down on the floor, stretched out her legs, and began to lament
bitterly.

He
was too young to understand by what channels their family's origin and history
could have become known, or for what reason those people were acting so cruelly
towards them, even if the husband was a former royal library clerk. It was no
mere accident, however, but a clear sign that the system's spirit of revenge
had not abated, and the next day, to escape the exactions that might follow,
mother and children left the village; their mother was already in the grasp of
a virtual persecution complex.

In
the village near Chongson where they lived for two years before going to settle
in Yongwol, a similar thing happened, even if the details were different. They
had headed blindly southwards on leaving Pyongchang, finally unpacking their
things in a village of more than forty hearths, surrounded by level fields
unusual for a mountain hamlet. It was their mother's choice, based on a
calculation that in such a place she would be able to earn a living by odd jobs
and sewing.

In
that village there lived a vicious landowner, by the name of Master Hong. In
his youth he had looked after the horses belonging to the official translator
for the royal envoy (*) to Peking; he made a substantial fortune by shady
transactions with which he bought some land in that remote mountain village and
settled there. But although he lived in a house with a tiled roof big as a
whale's back, and proudly displayed the official head-dress that went with the
letter of appointment to the title he had purchased for himself, there was no
concealing the coarseness of his servant origins.

He
had learned all the worst manners of the mandarin class; all the time left
after eating and sleeping he used to spend with women; he had one concubine
living in the house and two other regular concubines outside.

Yet
that selfsame Master Hong began to harrass his mother. By then she was well
into her thirties, and all that she had been through meant that her youthful
charms had nothing much left to inspire male ardour. She had grown up in a
noble home and married into an illustrious family, so presumably her
deeply-rooted dignity was what had awakened the interest of that old rake.

Hong's
yellowish, wrinkled face remained clearly stamped in his memory, he must often
have come hanging round their hovel. No doubt he proposed various enticements
to their mother, directly or indirectly; then finally, frustrated in his intentions,
he had recourse in an underhand way to the system's habitual practices.

Master
Hong casually told the magistrate's clerk of the family's origins, which he had
managed to unearth somehow, at the same time informing on them for having
cleared a few square yards of hillside woodland to serve as an allotment, as
everyone did.

The
local clerk was so shaken by the word "traitor" that he seemed to
have been scorched by it; he belatedly set in motion once again the system's
retaliatory mechanisms, regardless of the royal pardon given years before. The
clerk came running, trampled in fury over the little patch on the hill behind
the village that his mother and brother had cleared a few months earlier, and
screamed reproaches.

"Insolent
wretches! A traitor's breed, and yet you dare to go digging up our country's
soil?"

Meanwhile,
Hong stood sniggering at one side of the field.

The
details of events in the period in which he grew up remain obscure, as if
shrouded in mist, even in the otherwise entertaining and lively legends about
him. That mist should not be confused with the clouds of mystery that later
arose from popular affection.

It
was not that anything scandalous needed to be concealed; but the only way in
which the legends could deal effectively with their struggles against adverse
circumstances was to cover the whole matter with an abstract haze and move on,
since any such theme must very soon become boring by repetition.

It
is best to follow the example of the old stories, with the two episodes already
narrated. To put it briefly, his life from early childhood was so full of
experiences of alienation and loss of values that it can well be termed a
deviation from any norm. It might be added that their frequent moves were
originally a means of escape, but moving finally grew into a habit of his soul.
Later in life, when the necessity itself no longer existed, the call of the
vagrant life kept returning to lure him away.

Certainly
the system's stubborn revenge-seeking against the traitor grew weaker as time
went by. One sign of that can be seen in the fact that during the last years of
his childhood they lived openly in the street that also held the Yongwol county
offices.

"That's
enough hiding away. Let's go and live in a busy street, lost in the crowd. If
it's so hard to conceal who we are, we'd be better off in a place where it's
easier to earn a living, at least."

Their
mother's decision was made with no particular sign of regret on the evening of
the day the clerk had ruined their hillside patch. The two brothers silently
concurred; he was thirteen by now, while his brother Pyong-ha was fifteen,
already a young man.

Sure
enough, less than a year after they had moved to the streets of the town,
people had already identified them. But this time they did not move away. They
were so weary of running, and in any case the world's malice towards them
seemed to be diminishing to the point where it could be endured.

The
fact that he was able to grow up as he did, in ways not very much different
from those of the class into which he had been born, certainly seems to be not
unconnected with a dulling of the system's revenge-seeking. While the family
continued to be entirely dependant for its survival on the mother's daily
labour and needlework, no people like the former library clerk or the
magistrate's clerk ever crossed their path again.

10.

If
we say that he did not diverge so very much from the ways of life habitual to
the class to which he originally belonged, that is particularly true as far as
education was concerned. His education had begun in his childhood almost as a
form of amusement when the family was still enjoying times of prosperity, in
the mens' quarters of their house. It had not been interrupted while he was
living as the son of Kim Song-su, and it continued even during those hard years
when they were constantly on the move, from Yoju to Kapyong, to Pyongchang,
then Yongwol.

Education
represents a costly investment for an uncertain outcome at any age, and the
society of the late Choson Dynasty was no exception. The fees in money or cloth
at the village schools which provided primary level instruction were not cheap,
in comparison with the general standard of living of the period, but the
charges were even heavier when students reached the higher levels.

At
that time there was no institutionalized school system, and almost nothing in
the way of reference works for the use of those who might wish to study on
their own; people were virtually obliged to rely on human transmission.

It
is really nothing short of amazing that in later days his intellectual level
was such that he could stand on an equal footing with the best minds of his
age, although his life was full of hardship all the time he was growing up.

His
intellectual attainments were almost entirely the result of his own efforts.
True, there was the early training he had received from his father, and the
classes he attended in various schools and Confucian centres (*); but all the
time he spent in that way was less than an ordinary child would have needed to
master a single volume of basic history.

He
himself would surely have found it hard to explain the secret of his
achievement, but to those who come after, who can view the picture objectively,
it does not seem so difficult.

He
was never able to receive continuous instruction from a good teacher,
certainly, and there was no effective system to help him; but among the factors
that enabled him to rise to such high levels of attainment, the first that
strikes the eye is the whole character of study at that time. Generally
speaking, learning in the Choson Dynasty depended less on reasoning powers than
on mere knowledge, based as it was on memorisation, rather than a systematic
course of academic studies. It naturally follows, if we assume that his natural
talents lay precisely in those directions, that his accomplishments were less
astonishing than might otherwise seem.

One
other possible explanation lies in the plentiful free time he enjoyed, far more
than we can even begin to conceive of today.

His
mother took charge of all his day-to-day needs, although certainly their
standard of living was very low; for according to the generally received
notions of the age, so long as he had a book in his hands there could be no
criticism of the fact that he did nothing to lighten her task. His older
brother soon gave up studying and started working to help cover their needs,
which meant that he could use his time freely with an even clearer conscience.
It helps to take into consideration the way the period's scale of values was
distributed.

Generally
speaking, for intellectuals of the Choson Dynasty learning was the origin of
all values, and equally their sum total. The state examination once
successfully passed, learning gave access to power, wealth, and rank; once it
was united with character by means of self-cultivation, it might secure one an
almost religious veneration.

Learning
affected a person's high or low standing, differences between right and wrong
were determined by it, it even made all the difference between wealth and want.
The final outcome was a perfect model of the kind of system of values that
results when a society is constituted solely by ethical obligations and moral
principles, unable to make any distinction between the various values.

It
was only natural, insofar as he was an intellectual of this time, that he too
should be imbued with such a system of values. Yet that alone is surely
insufficient to explain his exceptional devotion to study during his formative years.
Inaddition, another element needs
to be included, namely those factors originating in his family history.

When
a talented young man of privileged social class is deprived for some reason of
his position, he has three ways to react.

The
first consists in planning active revolt against the system that has done the
depriving; the second involves devoting every scrap of talent and energy to
obtaining reintegration; the third is to torture oneself and then quickly find
a permanent place among the lower classes.

His
brother Pyong-ha, two years his senior, chose the third course, living the life
of the common people as soon as he was old enough. But Pyong-ha had far more
memories of times past than his younger brother, and in the end the pain
resulting from his choice was too great for him. After failing to make anything
of his life, he died when he was still only twenty-four years old.

Unlike
Pyong-ha, he adopted the second solution. Eager to regain his former social
rank, he clung to study as offering the only way to attain it. Any yearning is
bound to be stronger and more ardent when its object has been held, then taken
away, than when the aim is some new possession. As a result, he was most likely
to be different from any ordinary young nobleman of his age dreaming of a rise
on the social scale, by the ardour and effort he put into his studies.

His
mother's earnest hopes and prayers for him all blend into the family history as
factors sustaining his long quest of learning.

"You're
the only one left, now. I beg of you, never forget your mother's poor wounded
heart."

As
soon as he was old enough, Pyong-ha had thrown aside his books and gone out to
work in the marketplace; from that moment on, his mother kept urging him to
study, letting the tears flow that she normally avoided showing.

In
addition she strove to provide everything he might need for his studies, be it
books or paper, brushes, and ink, in full measure, working even more doggedly
than in the days before his brother had begun to help earn their daily living.
Sometimes it meant avoiding his brother's icy sneer.

People
sometimes say that women who have suffered a loss of social standing project
their desire for social promotion onto their children with particular
intensity. Statistics compiled by a foreign writer show how many of the world's
great men have come from families where the mother married a man inferior to
her in rank or class, which would support such a view. For those mothers, their
marriage is an experience of social degradation.

Clearly,
when his mother had married there had been no problem of that kind, she being a
member of the Yi family from Hampyong. But what she felt so bitterly after her
father-in-law's treachery was very clearly a loss of rank; her subsequent
longing for a recovery of lost status was no different from any other woman's
ardent desire for social promotion.

She
had projected her desire on to her husband, but when he died before even
reaching thirty, she naturally transfered her ambitions to her sons; as soon as
she saw the eldest lapsing into despair and resignation, she fixed her
remaining hopes on the gifted second son.

In
addition, there are other factors underlying his intellectual achievements, in
view of the circumstances in which he grew up. For example, his docile
temperament, some kind of inner awakening or unrecorded fateful incident. On
the whole what had to be covered has been covered. At least, by the time he
reached his coming-of-age, his learning, accumulated over the years in a
process whose precise details have not been recorded, was of a very advanced
level.

11.

At
what moment and in what manner did the poet start to grow in him, the
outstanding poet that he was ultimately to become?

To
trace his early steps as a poet, the first thing to examine will be the
contents of the learning he so arduously acquired. The scholarship of the time,
centred on what is nowadays called "the Chinese Classics," (*) was a
comprehensive discipline of encyclopedic proportions which included the natural
sciences, philosophy, and history. There were also political science, social
science, ethics, and aesthetics. In short, all of today's academic disciplines
were there under a single name.

Not
that every gentleman-scholar (*) was expected to master all those different
disciplines. One whose goal in life was to become a scholar would need to
acquire encyclopedic knowledge, but if the goal was to become a government
official, the necessary portions to be studied, there were well-defined areas
for study, with clear limits. With the system of government examinations (*) as
the gateway to a public career, one section of the natural sciences belonged to
the miscellaneous category in the examination, to which the middle classes had
access, while the category of letters and arts was part of the humanities,
which was only open to the gentleman class.

In
this literary category, the one area that no scholar could neglect was the
so-called "study of literature and poetics." In the literary division
of the preliminary examination, it was the only subject; it was equally
important in the classical division, where candidates needed the help of
poetics in order to express their knowledge of the Nine (*) Classics.

Even
in the main examination, where ever-increasing weight was given to the
Confucian Classics as the Choson Dynasty wore on, poetics remained equally
important as the means of expressing knowledge effectively.

Since
the social promotion offered by the national examination was the major
driving-force behind his pursuit of learning, it follows naturally that he
would make every effort to master the skills found in the "study of
literature and poetics," where the very first step was the study of
poetry.

The
fact that he later gained a reputation above any of his contemporaries for his
skill in elaborately styles of formal poetry serves to confirm the suggestion
that here lies the starting-point of his poetry.

Nevertheless,
it would be overhasty to conclude that such an unforgettable poet was born and
grew entirely on account of a desire for social advancement; in addition there
is a risk of confining the variety of poems that he left behind within too
narrow a framework.

If
he took the path that made him a poet, it may partly have been on account of an
artistic temperament in his blood; a remarkable, heaven-sent talent also played
a considerable role.

Then
again, the hurt resulting from the family downfall that so deeply marked his
early years must have had its own, not insignificant share in the formation of
the poet within him.

The
fear of death and the experience of flight had a brutal impact on his unformed
consciousness, which remained in part as a kind of instinct latent within him,
in part transformed into a sense of futility and casting a dark shadow over his
sensitivity; life in his youth, never able to put down roots, always having to
move from one place to another, while fragmentary memories of former prosperity
returned to torment him like so many wounds. His mother, driven by an
exaggerated sense of persecution like a wild animal pursued up a blind hillside
gully; the wretched conditions of a life in which he always felt as if his very
existence was threatened; the shadow of a complicity that ultimately came to
seem like a sense of original sin, on account of the way guilt for crime was
considered by society to be inherited; with public sentiment for the
preservation of the system more like an obsession than simple obedience and the
lust for revenge always being revived by the inertia of the lower administration,
he eventually came to consider the state and its laws as nothing but latent
violence. Their father, virtually absent from the time he began to grow up; his
isolation from boys of his own age caused by their frequent shifts of lodging
and his studies outside the institutions, and finally, mingled with all those
factors, the many resulting experiences of loss of value. . . .

All
these elements may not be absolutely necessary to make someone a poet, but must
have played no small role as stimuli urging one sensitive soul along the
pathways of poetry.Or perhaps,
more than that, all his memories from early on that had to be expressed were
growing inside him, waiting to find a form of poetry that would aesthetically
transform and structure them.

Certain
people feel that there is a difference between the kind of poetry he learned
and cultivated as part of his studies and that which he left behind him when he
was roaming the country as a poet in later times. It might be possible to
suggest a distinction whereby the former approximated to means and utility,
while the later works can be seen as corresponding to purpose and art.

Ever
since the "Songs of the Great T'ang" of King Yao and the "Songs
of the South Wind" by King Shun, (*) poetry has been vested with the
function of inculcating good customs and correcting wrong behaviour. As a
result, the poetry studied as part of general education always had clear
aspects of means and utility, whether it was seen as a necessary part of a
reader's studies, or as a leisure activity for a gentleman, or a way of
obtaining high marks in the state examinations.

However,
poetry soon began to break the ancient bridle and run free, from the great
innovators of the Chien-an and Zheng-shi Eras onwards, (*) refusing to be restricted
within the old solemn forms, be it philosophical poetry of "literal
meaning" or moralistic "thoughts without vice," as it passed on
down through the Chin, T'ang and Sung Dynasties. The decorative style of
Western Chin or the mystical works of Eastern Chin are cases in point, to say
nothing of the T'ang's search for beauty, or the plainness that the Sung poets
pursued. The preference for the more popular five- or seven-character line over
the classical four-character line, seems to have something to do with the same
tendancy.

Examination
poetry was not free of these influences. Its original aim was no doubt to serve
political ends or further the practical purposes of the ruling class, but those
immersing themselves in it got far more pleasure out of T'ang poetry than from
the Book of Odes (*). Consequently, while he trained in the conventions of
examination poetry, it would be false to affirm that he was confined within a
hidebound, narrowly exegetical line of poetry.

Considering
how his learning was mostly done away from institutions such as village schools
or Confucian centres, the assumption that his poetry developed equally freely
becomes perfectly tenable. Progressive aristocratic poets or poets of the
Practical Learning (*), as well as poets from among the enlightened common
people, and a host of nameless wandering poets, may all have been good masters
for him.

12.

Poetry
is the product of a consciousness, so the pursuit of a poet may in the end turn
out to be the pursuit of a consciousness. However, since that consciousness
exists in numerous forms, it is neither possible nor absolutely necessary to
comprehend it all at once.

The
main concern here is to gain a sense of the consciousness of his age, which
underwent various transformations to give rise to his poems. What relationship
exists between his own individual consciousness and the ideology of his times,
especially that of the ruling system?

He
was born and grew up in an age when new ideas, especially the Practical
Learning and Catholicism (*), were being introduced from China. There was no
challenge to the monarchy or the sytem of government as such, but questions
were beginning to arise in structural terms about such issues as the possession
and distribution of wealth and the nature of human relationships.

Perhaps,
if he had simply been able to grow up as the scion of a powerful family, he
might have manifested an interest in this new spirit of his age as an
enlightened aristocrat. If the stubborn deviations he later manifested towards
society and family can be considered as a form of passion, perhaps that same
passion might in any case have led him to doubt the ideology of the system.

Unfortunately,
though, he belonged to a family that was eliminated from the higher strata of
society for treason. It is certainly possible to imagine cases where such a
fact would give rise to an even stronger sense of revolt.

It
is actually very difficult, however, to find instances in the annals of a
stagnant agricultural society where one generation's revolt is passed on to the
next and gives birth to another rebellion. Instances are far more common where
people have ensured their survival by adhering completely to the system's
ideology, dreaming of a reintegration into the social rank they have been
expelled from; as already suggested, he was one such case.

Having
received the system's permission to go on living as a great favour, his father
had then died striving to regain a place within it, while his mother's only
wish in life was for a return to their former rank; his parent's influence must
have been considerable, and as he grew up he submitted almost unresistingly to
the established ideology. Loyalty to the king, piety towards one's parents:
scion as he was of a disgraced family that had undergone a grim baptism of
death for its failure to observe one of the two, and driven at the same time by
an impatient yearning for restoration, that dusty old ideology, handed down
through long centuries virtually unchanged, must have struck him as something
almost fresh and new.

In
addition, he accepted loyalty and piety as a unity; even if he had occasion to
think of them separately, he never perceived any conflict or tension between
them. For there existed a subtle logic, devised by the absolute despots of Asia
and perfected by their lackeys over long centuries. The ruler was identified
with the parents. The result was a state ideology that ensured without
difficulty the people's loyalty, even when the royal heir was a fool.
Incompetent, unjust, what to do? Parents are parents!

All
of which notwithstanding, the ruling system of the Choson Dynasty seems not to
have closed its eyes completely to the conflicts between the two. Not without a
degree of opposition, piety at the family level seems to have been accepted to
some degree as having the higher position, not only in the mind of the public
but even at an official level. For example, in the case of the crime of
non-denunciation, crimes committed by parents were excluded from those cases
where denunciation was otherwise obligatory.

In
cases of high treason the children were executed with their parents, not
because they had failed to denounce them, but as a direct result of the
country's having once adopted the law of the Chin by which family responsibility
extended over three generations. The great admiral Yi Sun Shin (*) quit a
battle on which the nation's whole destiny depended in order to attend his
mother's funeral, and no one criticized him.

Some
people consider that such a system of priorities derives from neo-Confucian
ethics; others acclaim it as the ethical norm of a governing system. If once
the two priciples of state and family loyalty come into direct confrontation
within an individual, such a system of priorities can make the haemorrage in
that person's conscience much deeper and more deadly.

13.

Ever
since humanity first discovered the form of expression termed poetry, love has
been its most frequent subject; the romantic itinerary often forms the most
colourful portion of a poet's biography. Taking into account the systems and
customs of the age in which he lived, no great expectations should be
entertained, but it is sure to be helpful to pause for a moment and see what
women meant to him in his growth as a poet.

As
the family moved from one place to another, he sometimes encountered girls who
made a profound impression on him. There was the youngest daughter of that
tomb-guard at Kapyong, in the outer wing of whose house they spent a summer;
and there had been a girl at the well-side as they passed through the village
of Pyongchang: their eyes met and although he never saw her again, her pure
cool gaze brought a mysterious pain and longing to his heart for several years
after. Then, once they moved to Yongwol, there were chance encounters with
various daughters of the marketplace.

Yet
it does not seem that there are any painful memories or special images of the
eternal female from his youth that can be compared with the fascinating
episodes dating from the later years when he was roaming the countryside as a
poet. This is mainly due to the general atmosphere of the times.

It
was a time when the sexes were strictly segregated from the age of six, not
only among the upper classes but even among the common people, as a rule that
could not be broken. There were, certainly, stories of young men and women
falling in love, as in the tale of Chunhyang or various other regional legends,
but these were almost always fictional or otherwise rare exceptions.

It
was an age, then, in which encounters between men and women were restricted; in
addition, with their frequent changes of residence, the family hardly had a
chance to strike up close relationships with any neighbours so that it was
scarcely possible for him to expect any such exception.

Admittedly,
once they were settled in the town of Yongwol the situation changed somewhat.
The merchants and craftsmen in the busy streets were less bothered about
keeping the sexes apart, and some of the more outgoing among their daughters
made eyes at him in secret, kept smiling at him provocatively, or could be seen
hanging around near him. But that was at a time when his feelings made him
unreceptive.

The
main factor that made him ignore those girls was the longing for social
promotion, which was beginning to burn in him with particular intensity at that
time. Once his brother had taken the path of a commoner's existence, the whole
responsibility for a restoration of the family fortunes fell on him and that in
turn drove him to bury himself in his books, the only way to attain that goal.

His
particular sensitivity about his social rank equally formed a solid wall
between him and the daughters of low-class families. Physically speaking, there
was no great difference between his life and that of his low-class neighbours;
his mind, though, was already living on the social level that he was sure he
would recover in time to come. As a result, no matter how pretty a girl might
be, if she belonged to a social class lower than his own he refused to tolerate
any mingling of rank.

His
marriage, when he was already nineteen, with a girl from the poor but once
noble Hwang family, is not unrelated to that same concern. The reason that he
was so very late in marrying, by the standards of the period, was that kept
rejecting easily available brides from lower-class families.

Perhaps
the extravagant affairs with low-class women that he indulged in after he had
begun his deviant life in later years were some kind of unconscious
compensation for the way he had spent his youth. It seems as if he belatedly
hurled himself into those indiscriminate sexual adventures only after his
ardent hopes of social promotion had been thoroughly doused and the
fastidiousness of his youth had lost all its meaning.

14.

At
last this pursuit of his life through all its deviations has reached the point
where the traditional accounts normally begin: that dramatic first episode,
involving a poetry-writing contest that he is supposed to have entered and won
with a controversial poem.

This
is how the legend goes: when he was nineteen, he entered a poetry contest held
in Yongwol county and was awarded first prize. The topic set was a comparison
between the loyalty of a certain Chong who died resisting the rebel army led by
Hong Kyong-rae (*) and the crime of a certain Kim who surrendered to the
rebels; his poem was particularly severe in its condemnation of Kim. Returning
home in triumph, he duly learned from his widowed mother that the Kim in
question was his own grandfather; unable to master the shock, he quit his home
and from that day on covered his face with a broad bamboo hat, spending the
rest of his life as a wandering vagabond. Considering himself unloyal since
descended from a traitor, and unfilial for having called his own grandfather a
criminal cursed by heaven, he never again exposed his face to the light of the
sun, as a sign that a criminal such as he had no right to walk on the face of
the earth.

For
a popular tale it is certainly admirably constructed. At first sight, the
dramatic reversal seems plausible and the reason offered for his later
wanderings appears highly convincing. However, as is clear from what has so far
been seen, there is a great difference between the legend and his real life.

It
is true that in the autumn of the twenty-sixth year of the reign of King Sunjo,
1826, the year in which he turned nineteen, a poetry competition (*) was
organized in one county of Kangwon Province, though it was not Yongwol, and it
is true that he took part in it.

At
that time, thanks to his brother's decision to abandon study and devote himself
entirely to earning a living, the family was in a more settled situation than
they had ever known before, while his own studies were advancing towards
maturity. He decided to enter that competition as a test of the level he had
reached before sitting for the preliminary examination.

However,
the facts of the case differ from the contents of the legend from the moment
that the subject of the poem to be composed was posted at the competition site.

"Write
in celebration of the loyal death of Chong Shi, the county magistrate of Kasan,
deploring the terrible crime of Kim Ik-sun." Chong Shi, the magistrate of
Kasan named here, was widely revered by the scholars of the time for his loyalty,
having perished heroically on the battlefield while resisting the rebel army
led by Hong Kyong-rae.

The
main problem arising here concerns his knowledge of the Kim Ik-sun who was set
up as the contrasting example to Chong Shi. The legend maintains that when he
read the subject proposed for the competition, and even after he had completed
his poem, he had no idea at all that Kim Ik-sun was his own grandfather. But as
already seen, the disaster in question occurred when he was already nearly five
years old, and it had such an impact on him that it would surely have been hard
to forget completely, even for someone with a poor memory. Considering how
remarkably sensitive he was, it flies in the face of reason to claim that he
knew absolutely nothing of the reason why his father had collapsed and died
coughing blood so young, or why his mother and his brothers had been obliged to
keep moving from place to place and never settle down, no matter how completely
his mother kept silent about those things in later days.

There
is also something unconvincing in the way the legend tries to stress certain
elements in order to lend extra realism to his personal agony. To think that he
knew from the beginning that Kim Ik-sun was his grandfather, so that he was
obliged to formulate calmly in his poem the inner conflicts arising out of that
awareness, is far more moving than the dramatic twist found in the legend.

From
the moment he read the topic posted high on the wall of the main hall where the
competition was to be held, until the moment, some hours later, when he took up
his brush, wrote, and left the place, he experienced nothing less than a
concentrated version of all the torments and tensions that he had been obliged
to endure in the course of a whole lifetime.

There
occurred within him a resounding clash between the two central values, loyalty
and piety, that he had sworn ever to live by; put more concretely, between his
desire for social promotion or his hope to regain lost rank on the one hand
and, on the other, his sense of moral right, which had been raised to the level
of instinct by his concern for the first.

When
he recognized the name of his grandfather, his thoughts froze, as if he was
about to faint. It was nothing but a topic set for a rural poetry competition,
but it served to show him clearly that the system's malevolence had not
diminished with the passage of time, and that there were towering walls of
social difference blocking his return. There was no guarantee that he would not
encounter the same malevolence, the same walls, when he came to take the
primary or main state examinations.

"It's
still not finished. Perhaps my day will never come at all. . . ." he
murmured bitterly, finally recovering his wits that had briefly frozen under
the impact of indescribably violent emotions. He stood up like someone
bewitched and made as if to leave the competition site. Nothing was very clear,
but certainly until that moment his conscience had been following the lines
laid down by generally held opinion.

Before
he could pick up his writing materials, however, an abrupt change occurred in
his state of mind. Later the precise order of events became blurred in his
memory, but at that moment he seemed mainly to be dominated by the logic of
emotion. Suddenly his mother's face loomed before his eyes and her tearful plea
rang clearly in his ears: "Alas, you are the only one left. You alone can
restore our family's fortunes."

Another
powerful argument came into his mind: "How can I walk away from here after
so many years of studying? This may only be a rural competition of no great
consequence, but if once I withdraw, it will be same at the primary
examination, and at the main examination. Our return to the old house in Seoul
will remain for ever a hopeless dream. . ."

He
recalled his young wife, who had seen him off with a beseeching gaze, saying
nothing, and his brother who had come home the day before with a sullen
expression and thrown him a string of coins: "I'm a man who soon decided
never to look up into a tree he couldn't climb, but you've squandered so many
years on this stuff, you'd best give it a try. Only don't count on it too much.
Time may have passed to some extent, but are they really going to give you a
chance now? If things don't go as you hope, you come straight back here, then
you and I can set up a stall or farm some land. If there's a wish that we can't
fulfill, it can always be passed on to the next generation. If a ruined family
manages to rise again by the third generation, why that's not so long. .
."

His
brother had been a casual labourer, and sometimes sold firewood, then, more
recently, he had got interested in peddling and had recently gained himself
quite a reputation in the market as a moderately successful middle-man and
broker. When his brother had spoken to him in those terms, he had felt a spasm
of inward revolt, but given the way things had turned out, they kept him from
leaving the competition more forcefully than his mother's pleading.

He
settled stealthily back into his place. This time his thoughts began to develop
guided by the cold light of reason.

The
principles of loyalty to the throne, inscribed in the basic forms of society,
and of family piety, written in the ethics of consanguinuity, were equally
essential for all to observe. It would be absurd to establish a priority of one
over the other.

There
have to be standards for such a priority in each particular case, standards
which must establish clearly what is right or wrong. If family piety is put
above loyalty to the throne irrespective of right or wrong, the logic of
blood-ties reduces men to the level of mere animals. . . .

His
grandfather's choice had been mistaken, wrong not only in the eyes of the state
but of opinion at large, and in the end he had been condemned to perpetual
exclusion by society as such.

The
moment his grandfather had been sentenced, he had become a non-person, had lost
all identity, not merely by the state's legal judgement but equally by
society's ethical judgement. Could he then still be considered to exist, even
on the basis of a morality founded on consanguinuity? Surely not. There too,
his grandfather had to be considered not to exist. . . . The rough logic seemed
to come flooding into his mind in a flash.

Once
the direction of his ideas had changed, his mind adjusted and began to work at
dazzling speed. His exceptional memory selected materials that could be of
service from all his accumulated stocks of knowledge; then his verbal skills,
that were no less remarkable than his memory, began to give logical expression
to his materials.

Soon,
even more reasons why it would be wrong to give up began to strike him. Bit by
bit those reasons built themselves up into a positive right to stay there, and
finally overwhelmed the general considerations that had made him waver before.

I'm
going to write. Not about how family piety is one of the highest values of our
present age, not about my grandfather Kim Ik-sun; I'm going to exercise the
right of one generation to dispute the erroneous choices of a previous
generation. I will wield the brush of objectivity on our ineradicable past and
its disputes. Without more ado, having thus made up his mind, he quietly
prepared the ideas for his poem as he ground the ink.

His
studies, faithful to the system's ideology, enabled him to begin his first
stanza without difficulty (*):

Kim
Ik-sun, you were a true subject

descended
through long generations;

the
lord Chong was only a mediocre official.

Yet
you took the features of Li Ling

who
surrendered to barbarians

and
noble Chong earned a hero's name

equal
to that of Yue Fei.

Unable
to master his fury, the poet sings a bitter song

as
he fondles his sword beside the autumn stream.

Sonchon,
the town entrusted to you,

had
long been defended by generals.

Surely
it was a place you should have defended

more
righteously than Kasan?

Having written thus far, he began to extol Chong Shi
alone in order to reinforce the comparison:

Lu
Zhong-lian was not alone

in
sustaining the nation of Chou,

and
there were many like Chu-ko Liang

to
aid the kingdom of Han.

We
had loyal Chong Shi:

he
strove to keep back the wind with bare hands,

and
died loyally,

the
old loyal subject of Kasan, whose exalted name

will
shine bright in the autumn sunshine.

His
spirit will return to the southern tombs

to
keep company with Yue Fei.

His
bones shall go to the western hills

to
lie beside those of Boyi and Shuji.

After which, clenching his teeth, he aimed his brush at
his grandfather Kim Ik-sun:

That
year's tidings from the North-west were too lamentable, everyone wondered what family

such
an official came from.

The
answer: from the mighty clan of the Kims of Changdong,

a
name ending in "Sun," well known by all in the capital.

Surely
such a family had enjoyed

great
stock of royal bounty,

duty
demanded not to yield before even a million foes.

Did
the Chongchon River wash away all the horses

you
had formerly led?

Where
did you hang up all the strong bows

from
the mighty stronghold?

Those
selfsame knees

that
once had free access to the royal palace

turned
north-west and bent before the traitor there.

How
will such a soul ever enter the land of the dead?

Kings
already dead will be there first.

Tears
came to his eyes as he wrote. He took them for tears of righteous indignation
but underlying his emotion was the memory of all the unhappy times that he, his
parents and his brothers had had to endure on account of his grandfather's
wrong choice, feelings of resentment and anger towards the man who had been the
cause of it all.

The
system's ideology, on which he based his indignation, was perhaps a mere
pretext to justify his personal resentment.

Furtively
brushing away his tears, he added the concluding lines. Meanwhile his
resentment had become more insidious than ever, overwhelming the instinctive
resistance of the blood flowing in his veins, to come bursting out in one final
blaze. If his grandfather's spirit still had a heart, those lines were like a
sword aimed directly at it:

A
man who forsook his parents, you betrayed your king.

A
single death's too slight.

You
deserve ten thousand deaths.

You
know full well the code laid down

in
the Annals of Confucius.

Dishonourable
deed! Inscribed forever

and
transmitted in our nation's chronicles.

He
left the main hall that day, after submitting his poem to the supervising
official, firmly convinced of having acted rightly. It was the same as he drank
wine in a tavern while he awaited the outcome. Devoid of any fear of having
violated the moral code, or of the least shadow of guilt, his heart beat high,
like a general who waits for news of victory, as he tried to recall the lines
of his poem.

True,
from time to time he could not help falling into painful moments of
self-interrogation. Deny it though he might, could he be so sure that his
decision had not been caused by his intense desire for promotion overcoming the
morality of family obligations? Was he not trying to sever the ties uniting him
with his grandfather by deliberately making things worse than they were, while
his real goal was to free himself of that sense of original sin which had
haunted him for so long? Worse still, was he not setting out to make a dirty
deal with society by selling his ancestor to purchase this indulgence?

However,
to all these questions and doubts he found himself able to give a confident
reply in the negative. Why, even supposing it were true, who could blame me? I
have paid too dearly in life on account of a grandfather whose face I cannot
even recall.

Grandfather's
spirit passed into me through my father before ever he committed that crime.
Yet all my youth has been spoilt on the basis of a supposed blood-tie that
cannot be proved and that has never even been verified properly. Naturally I'm
entitled to reject all that . . . .

What
could never have been anticipated, though, was the abrupt change in his
feelings when he learned that he been awarded the first prize. He set out for
the main hall as twilight was closing in; but on the way, feeling impatient, he
asked someone who was coming back from reading the announcement who had won.
The man spoke his name straight away, then added as an afterthought: "It
was really a very good poem of its kind. Of course, it doesn't matter how sharp
it is, a sword can't kill a dead man a second time. Still. . . if he has any
descendants around, they must be terribly hurt."

His
heart had been secretly throbbing in hope of being the winner, yet at that
moment for some unknown reason he felt himself touched by a strange feeling of
horror, instead of happiness. The armour of self-rationalizations that he had
spent hours putting on had seemed so utterly solid; what was it then that had
penetrated it so easily and pierced the poor poet's sensitive heart with such
pain?

There
would be no noisy street parade in a flowered head-dress as there was for the
winners of the national examination, but still there would be some ceremony of
encouragement of the kind proper to a local poetry contest. The gentleman-scholars
of the place would throw a party to which the winner, together with the first
and second runners-up, would be invited to receive congratulations; normally
the local magistrate would attend as well.

If
he won, his original intention had been to reveal himself boldly, manifesting
his talents and learning to the full. That might be the beginning of
relationships that he had until then never known, relationships that might
serve as a precious springboard for his next step upwards. But that one casual remark
made by the local scholar who had told him of his success had completely doused
his high spirits.

Just
why was not yet clear to him, but he suddenly began to fear questions on his
origins, he no longer felt so confident he would be able to expose clearly the
logic that had led him to ignore the priority normally given to family piety.
He finally decided not to present himself before the jury that evening but
instead found a lonely inn and began to drink, because of that sudden change in
his feelings.

Ironically,
what he had guessed might happen and had tried to avoid befell him in that inn.
He was thinking back over the day's decision with an increasing sense of
inexplicable dread, perhaps because the excitement he had felt at pitting his
skills against so many rivals during the competition was waning, while he was
losing his sharp sense of self-interest under the influence of the wine; just
then a traveller came in.

"Tell
me, young gentleman, did you by any chance participate in today's competition?"

The
newcomer came into the room where he had been sitting alone and formulated his
question as he plumped himself down in front of the table with a cheery smile,
without waiting to be invited. His dress was not too rough, yet he seemed
accustomed to travelling.

The
fellow looked to be some ten or more years older than himself and he did not
feel averse to having someone to talk to, so he was not unwilling to share his
table with him despite his limited funds.

Before
accepting the bowl of wine that he offered, the traveller declined his name and
place of origin. He was called Noh Jin, from the Kwanso region. The confidence
needed to identify himself abandoned him and on the spur of the moment he said
he was such and such a Kim from Yongwol, giving a false name.

"And
tell me, Mr. Kim, don't you find today's incident rather strange?" After
giving free rein for a while to remarks designed to get himself a free drink,
Noh Jin suddenly challenged him.

"What
are you talking about?"

"That
fellow Kim Pyong-yon who won the competition. Why, they say he still hadn't
presented himself before the jury when night fell."

At
those words his heart sank for no reason, and he made a great effort to conceal
his agitation.

"I
suppose some urgent business came up."

"No
matter how urgent. Even in a small town competition, coming first is no easy
matter."

After
saying that, Noh Jin seemed unsatisfied and added:

"How
could such a gifted fellow stay hidden in this god-forsaken region, I wonder.
You know, I was so eager to see a man with such astonishing gifts that I waited
more than two hours just to get a close look at him after the lists went
up."

"Did
you read his poem, then? Was it so extraordinary?"

"A
scholar must not only be good at his own writing, he has to be good at judging
the work of others. If you took part in today's competition as you say, Mr.
Kim, didn't you see the winning poem too?"

After
chiding him, Noh Jin emptied a bowl of wine then quietly closed his eyes. He
seemed to be about to recite something he had memorized.

The
poem that he began to recite after a slight pause was none other than that
which he had written earlier in the day. With an astonishing show of memory,
Noh Jin declaimed the thirty-six lines of that long poem smoothly without omitting
a single word.

Among
all the emotions a poet may experience in life, one of the highest and most
long-lasting must be that which he feels when he hears one of his own works on
another person's lips for the first time.

He
was no exception, and he listened with hushed breath until Noh Jin had
finished. His perplexity and anguish might be great, the happiness he felt at
such a confirmation of his achievement was equally considerable.

His
recitation over, Noh Jin again indicated his admiration:

"I'm
a man who gets his living by composing formal poetry, but I've never come
across anything as amazing as that. How shall I put it? It's as if I was
watching a group of yokels fooling around and suddenly got a bucket of cold
water over my head. You see, it is in perfect accord with the principles
governing heaven and nature, while it touches the cardinal principles of
politics and ethics."

"Don't
you think you may be giving too much value to some fearless lad determined to
show off? The spirit of these formal poems has been handed down through
thousands of years in every Chinese kingdom, great and small, after all. . . It
must surely not be hard to copy and imitate them?"

"Oh
no. The formal poem contains such diversified forms of splendour that it is
cherished for ever, displaying as it does the very essence of poetry. One can
never be certain, but I believe that in time to come the name of this Kim
Pyong-yon will be renowned at every level of society, simply on account of his
poetry."

He
felt grateful and uneasy, sitting there listening while Noh Jin continued to
extol his poem. His views were so utterly unlike those of any ordinary scholar
that curiosity of a quite different kind began to awaken in him; curiosity
about Noh Jin himself.

"I
was another of those who had high ambitions while they were studying; while I
was growing up people would tell me how talented I was. But as I already told
you, I come from the North-western region. That means I'm disqualified from
public office; no matter how learned and talented you are, it's all no use,
there's nothing you can do. Besides, the national examinations are not what
they used to be; I spent ten years frequenting them, with no result, just
killing time. Nowadays I sell the great formal poems I write to the sons of
rich families. When I'm tired of that, I go roaming the length and breadth of
the land, as I'm doing now. I'm getting on in life, so when I get back home
this time, I'm thinking of opening a little school to scratch a living. .
."

Such
was the plaintive tale Noh Jin produced in response to his questions. The
talkative guest of a few minutes before had disappeared, and suddenly he found
himself with an unhappy scholar of nearly forty sitting at his table.

It
was while Noh Jin was lamenting his misfortunes that his heart began to open.
It was partly the effect of the wine, but the way Noh Jin had suffered on
account of his north-western origins awakened in him a sense of comradeship
with an intensity that he had never experienced before.

"Just
supposing. . . if Kim Ik-sun still had descendants living, what effect do you
think that poem would have on them?"

He
finally broached the topic that he had been trying so hard to hold back inside
him. By now Noh Jin too was quite far gone, so he took the remark blithely
without any apparent effort at deep reflection.

"That
cannot be. Self-cultivation is the basis of statecraft; loyalty to the monarch
cannot be attained except by the practice of the virtues of family piety. Such
was the teaching of the Great Sage, Confucius himself."

"If
parents take the wrong path, to disobey them is a way of practising piety,
surely?"

"There
is no such principle. If you're a scholar at all, you must know about the
filial piety shown by King Shun. His father, deceived by his step-mother,
several times had him thrown into a pit to die; yet did the king ever oppose
his father? Not once! No one may judge the rights and wrongs of their
parents."

The
effect of the wine on Noh Jin vanished as he spoke, and he showed signs of
gradually beginning to suspect what he really meant. But he did not want to
stop now. Instead, feeling an inner vehemence, he began to expose the ideas he
had been refining all that afternoon.

"And
yet in the end the individual lives under the constraints of the
institutions."

With
that, he yielded to an agitation he could no longer control. He felt that their
discussion had now reached its most important point, perhaps because of some
extravagant transformation in his ever-increasing inner tension. It may have
been the result of accumulated drunkenness, or it may have been a growing sense
of guilt, suddenly he felt as if Noh Jin had known all along what he had done
and had deliberately searched him out in order to demand an explanation, which
only fired his excitement further.

That
was the end of any calm discussion. After a few more words, Noh Jin's lips
clamped shut in amazement and doubt, while his own agitated voice poured on and
on like water gushing from a broached dam. He began to explain why the
descendants of Kim Ik-sun were entitled to revile their ancestor. Here were all
the different feelings that had gone sweeping through his mind like powerful
flames before he took up his brush during the competition earlier that day.

Noh
Jin gazed at him in mute amazement, listening intently to his words filled with
pent-up resentment. It was only when a tone of lamentation was beginning to
intrude on his anger that he asked in amazement, as if it had just dawned on
him, "You mean to say that you are. . . .?"

"It's
true. I am Kim Pyong-yon, the grandson of Kim Ik-sun. Was I not right to
compose such a poem?"

At
that, Noh Jin's face twisted with a mixture of emotions. His feelings left him
no leisure to pay attention to such a change of expression, though, for he had
passed beyond excitement and no longer cared what happened. He was too busy
pouring out the words that had lain dormant inside him for so long, not just
all that day, but ever since he had first begun to be aware of life as a child.

"How
can you even begin to imagine the life I have led? Do you realize what it means
to be called the descendant of a traitor? Just now you were saying that the
individual comes before customs and systems, but you can't possibly know how
miserably those of us who are deprived of their protection are forced to live.
You can't begin to know how tenacious and insidious a revenge the institution
takes against anyone who has once disobeyed. . . ."

He
began to pour out a whole series of excuses for his unfilial behaviour,
furnished now by the logic of his feelings in an order the reverse of that
which he had followed during the competition. Unable to perceive how Noh Jin's
expression had gradually hardened and that an icy smile had risen to his lips,
he was entirely bent on profferring a self-justification that was imperceptibly
turning into a whining incantation. Tears began to pour down his cheeks,
without his realizing it.

Noh
Jin had taken up the empty wine bowl then banged it down on the edge of the
table, cutting him off in mid-stream. His incantation had been wandering to and
fro chaotically between his mother's ardent dreams, his unutterably dismal
future prospects, and memories of their former prosperity. He suddenly became
aware of something brushing like a chill breeze across his brow and came
abruptly to his senses. The Noh Jin sitting there opposite him was no longer
the same man as the traveller who had come cadging a drink earlier that
evening.

"You've
wasted a lot of words trying to vindicate yourself, but now I know why you
acted as you did. You betrayed your grandfather so that you could get back as
quickly as possible to the good old days, nice food, fine clothes, the lot! If
I had to listen to any more I'd be obliged to wash out my ears more thoroughly
afterwards, so I prefer to leave now."

Noh
Jin had spoken coldly, in a style of superior scorn; he shook out the hems of
his coat as he rose. Completely taken aback by this unexpected change, he
stared up at Noh Jin. He was not really very tall, yet in some strange way his
face seemed to loom far above him.

The
effect of what was happening before his very eyes and the full import of Noh
Jin's words struck his heart like a blow from an iron cudgel just as Noh Jin
had pulled on his straw sandals, shouldered his bundle of belongings, and was
already on his way out through the brushwood gate of the tavern. Clutching his
breast that was throbbing as if about to burst, his eyes took a blank farewell
of Noh Jin's retreating back.

As
if he could feel the eyes following him, Noh Jin paused just outside the gate,
glared up at the night sky thick with stars, and growled something to himself
in a clear voice.

"I've
been begging drinks like this for more than ten years; in future I must be more
careful about who I drink with. The grandfather sold the king to buy his own
wretched life; now here's the grandson busy selling his grandfather to buy
himself honours. I'd rather drink cow's piss than quench my thirst with such a
cunning traitor's wine."

Those
words struck him a heavy blow of pain. His breast seemed about to burst, he
clutched it even more tightly. A nauseous lump suddenly rose into his throat.
Taken by surprise, he brought it up onto his coat and saw it was a clot of
crimson blood.

15.

According
to the legend, immediately after returning from that competition he left home
for good and began a life of wandering. That follows naturally from the claim
that he learned the identity of his hitherto unknown grandfather only after he
had written his poem, a discovery which filled him with shame and bitterness.
As already seen, that is merely an example of one error leading to another.

After
Noh Jin's departure he spent the rest of the night in a state of complete
drunkenness, then left the inn at dawn. He kept thinking back over what he had
done and what Noh Jin had said the previous evening, and although he tried to
justify himself, the only result was an ever increasing sense of shame and
guilt.

He
reached home at nightfall; his mother and his wife were waiting for him, their
faces full of hope. He merely told them that his learning was still
insufficient, so he had won nothing, then he went to his room and lay down. The
expressions of disappointment that his mother and wife were unable to hide only
added to his torment. He did not, however, tell them that he had won the first
prize. He had decided to act as if the entire competition, and his poem in
particular, had never existed.

Two
days later his brother came home with a face bright red from drinking.

"I've
just been hearing at the market inn how a scholar from Yongwol called Kim
Pyong-yon won first prize at the poetry competition over in Chongson; what does
that mean?"

The
question took him aback but he managed to reply without flinching.

"I
couldn't even finish my poem. I suppose there must have been someone with the
same name as mine."

His
brother looked sharply at him as if he suspected something, asked a few more
questions and then, when he continued to deny everything, stalked out again
with an air that said, "I find it hard to believe you."

Once
his brother had gone and he was left alone in his room, he began to realize
with dread that the affair was going to be far less simple than he had
expected. If his name had already been rumoured around, people would probably
soon be talking about the contents of the winning poem and then someone would
tell how the winner had failed to present himself before the jury.

There
were already several people who knew that they were descendants of Kim Ik-sun,
so once the rumour got around it was obvious that they would quickly realize
that he was the Kim Pyong-yon in question.

Not
that everybody would be like Noh Jin, surely, but once the thought struck him,
he could no longer stay crouching in his room. Suddenly he heard Noh Jin's icy
voice ringing in his ears again, and his heart ached.

Finally,
he leaped to his feet and left the house with no clear goal in view. At first
he had simply been intending to cool his head in the fresh air and try to collect
his thoughts, but soon he found his steps taking him towards the street where
the drinking shops were. He wanted to find his brother. Not because he already
seemed to have some idea of what was going on, but because in such a moment
there was nobody else he could talk to.

His
brother was at a card table in the back room of one of the inns in the cattle
market. He only found him after enquiring here and there; his brother threw
down his cards with an awkward smile and stood up.

"What's
wrong with you, then? Coming to look for me in this kind of place. . . ."

His
face was already dark from drink. In his efforts to fit in among the rough gang
of market-people, he had been drinking hard for the past several years to give
himself the nerve he needed.

His
brother purposely wore his shirt gaping open with the sleeves rolled up in an
attempt to look tough, but the sight of the palid skin underneath gave him a
sudden shock.

"There
was something I wanted your advice about. . . ."

"Advice?
A scholar like you needs advice from me, a market lout?"

At
home, his brother would tease him for his zeal in studying, but to his
market-place companions he boasted of how his younger brother was a scholar.

His
brother's response that day seemed less designed to tease him than to show off
before all the roughnecks sitting round about him. It was the same when he
called boldly for the landlady and gave his orders.

"Clear
out the room over there and make sure you prepare your best dishes to go with
the drink; here's a gentleman who may come home one day with that crown of
flowers you get when you pass the state examination."

Once
they were sitting alone in the quiet room, though, his brother's eyes filled
with an anxiety he could no longer conceal.

He
suddenly felt guilty for no apparent reason, and hesitated a while before he
began to stammer out what was burdening him. He told how he had really been the
winner at the competition, and what had been the contents of his poem, he even
found himself repeating what Noh Jin had said.

Perhaps
the years spent working the marketplace had sharpened his brother's insight
into human nature, or perhaps he was quicker on the uptake because they had
both shared the same fate, in any case his brother understood exactly what was
troubling him before he had even finished telling him.

"Of
course, people are quite ready to understand if we bear a grudge towards our
ancestors hidden inside us; but if ever we betray those ancestors in the hope
of gaining some respect for ourselves, then trouble starts. You're really in a
fix. You know the saying, 'A horse with no legs goes a thousand leagues?' Once
the full story gets around, you're going to have a hard time, no matter what
excuses you make. Everybody may not feel the same way as that scholar you met
but still, once public opinion inclines in that direction, people's private
sympathies are going to take second place and you'll find it very difficult to
stay on here."

His
brother's expression was bitter as he said this. There was none of the teasing
or chiding that was customary with him; indeed, as he went on his words were
tinged with a comforting note.

"Loyalty
and piety may be basic values for scholars, but for people like us they're more
like two poised swords. If you cling to family piety, loyalty cuts you, and if
you go grovelling after loyalty it's family piety that brings you down. That's
why I gave up the whole damned gentleman-scholar thing, it was too much of a
headache; but you're bright, I thought you might scrape through somehow. Well,
there's no going back on what's done; we'd better think carefully about what to
do next."

His
brother might force himself to be violent, ready to strangle his vulgar rivals
out in the market for a tiny profit, but inwardly he was no ordinary vendor.

Maybe
his brother's drinking, his tenacity, his blustering even, were all ways of
filling the gap between his inner self and the physical reality he found
himself thrown into. He had always taken these things as his brother's
self-inflicted torments, and had disapproved of them, but on hearing him speak
now, he felt deeply moved.

The
next morning, his brother came to see him with a surprising decision already
taken. After the previous day's drinking he had fallen asleep in the afternoon
and at dawn was just waking up when his brother arrived; it had been a long
time since he had seen him with a face untouched by drink.

"I
was thinking about things last night, and I reckon it's time we left this town.
Luckily there's a place I'd already been looking at, I think we'd better go and
live there. It's about twenty miles from here, not far from Wasok village in
the direction of Uipung; I know a valley up there that will do just fine for
the likes of us to live hidden away in. To tell you the truth, I'm sick and
tired of this vendor's life. And I can't stand seeing mother still going out to
work for other people now she's getting old. . . One way and another I've
managed to save a bit, too, so we can buy a patch of land up there; once it's
been cleared and dug it shouldn't be too hard for us all to scrape a living.
It'll be a hundred times better than living here with people picking on us all
the time."

It
was all very sudden, but he agreed with his brother that it was the best thing
they could do. Their mother may have felt that something unusual must be afoot,
seeing the two brothers whispering together, for she accepted the oldest
brother's suggestion with no great objections.

So
finally, late in the autumn that year, they set out once more for a new home,
in what is now Wasok village in the Hadong district of Yongwol county.
Altogether there were six of them: his wife and himself, his older brother
Pyong-ha and his wife, his mother, and his younger brother Pyong-du.

16.

The
year that followed was destined to be a very special period. They settled in a
valley called Oduni, a little way outside of Wasok; there they built a small,
thatched cottage and began a quite different kind of life from anything they
had ever known before. This time it was a farming life, based on the small
paddy-field they had bought with his brother's savings, and a vegetable-patch
they cleared on a nearby hillside.

He
put away his books and went out to work with his brothers. Inevitably, the
various farming tasks, such as transporting loads in an A-frame on his back,
which he had never done before, were hard work and left him exhausted; yet he
felt more peace of heart than at any other moment.

The
sense of satisfaction, the happiness of producing something, everything in his
life was new and therefore affected him more intensely. After hoeing the field,
a job that felt more like fighting a battle, he would sit there wiping away the
sweat and gazing up at the white clouds as they floated across the sky; such
moments made his earlier ambitions and dreams seem completely meaningless.

All
six members of the family, from his thirteen-year-old brother Pyong-du to his
mother, who was not yet fifty, were fit and able to work; as a result they were
able to gather a rich harvest. Their well-tended fields produced bigger and
better crops than any of their neighbours' and they soon had such a store of
firewood, dried plants, mushrooms and wild fruit, that they alone would have
been sufficient to keep them from starving during the winter. They were surely
the most contented and happy moments of a lifetime, not only for him but for
all the members of the family.

Yet
that contented and happy time was not destined to last for long. Their mother
had renounced nothing of her earlier hopes and prayers, and she it was who
brought about the first cracks in their contentment and happiness. In the
beginning, she had seemed to be readily adapting to the new life, seeing that
it had been decided in concertation by the two grown-up sons; but as she gradually
realized what it all meant, she began to manifest feelings of resistance.

It
was the morning after they had completed their first rice-harvest, in the
autumn of the year following their arrival. They had cooked some of the new
rice and there was soup made from meat bought in the village; as the whole
family was sitting at table, his mother addressed him in sorrowful tones.

"Ah,
back when we used to hear you reading aloud to yourself in the house, I could
relish even thin corn gruel; now here we are eating beef soup with rice, and I
just can't savour it at all. Have you really decided to spend the rest of your
life like this, working on a farm?"

His
mother's words seemed to tear at an old wound inside him.

A
similar incident occurred about one month later, when his first son, Hak-kyun,
was born. His mother had scarcely had time to express her joy at seeing her
first grandson before she heaved a great sigh that he was clearly intended to
overhear.

"A
boy's been born alright; but what a miserable existence he's going to have!
Born in this god-forsaken valley, the son of a farm-labourer, it's as clear as
river water that he'll grow up no better than an animal."

He
was too young to give up everything, too, and that was no less powerful than
his mother's ardent dreams.

Although
he had experienced a tremendous shock the previous year, and this new life they
had begun was quite unexpectedly attractive, that was not enough to uproot
completely the desire for social promotion that had once been so intense in
him.

As
autumn began, he felt a longing for study come alive again just as he was
beginning to experience a sense of uncertainty regarding their newly chosen
life.

What
is more, even without his mother's remarks, the birth of his first son gave him
cause to think about his future.

Everything
would not come to an end with his own life, after all; the family line would be
handed down from one son to another without interruption, his son had inherited
the blood of their grandfather, as he had done, meaning that he in turn would
be forced to live under the same yoke, unless someone could free them; and this
new life he had embarked on was clearly powerless to get them free. At which
point in his reflections, he suddenly started to feel that the self-sufficient
life of the past twelve months had been an utter and disgraceful waste of
precious time.

The
winter months that followed played their part in nudging him back towards his
books and his previous aspirations. Snow fell exceptionally early that year,
and in such quantities that the paths leading up into the hills and down to the
fields were soon blocked; once such days came, with nothing to do but stay
indoors, it was almost natural that his books should emerge from the wicker
hampers in which they had stayed bundled up for so long, if only to occupy the
hours of forced idleness. There had been a moment of hesitation before he took
out the first volume; once that was out, the next quickly followed, until in no
time at all his books had recovered the place in his life they occupied when he
was studying before; and with them came, one by one, the ambitions that he had
nourished back in those earlier days.

The
first person to perceive this change was his wife, since they lived in such
proximity. Now his wife, belonging as she did to the Hwangs of Changsu, had
never had to undergo the loss of rank and fortunes that his mother had suffered
as one of the Yi's of Hampyong. When she was born, her family had already
fallen almost to the level of the humblest classes as a result of events
several generations earlier. Since he was still a gentleman by birth, their
marriage had rather brought her up a few rungs on the social ladder. Perhaps it
is not surprising, then, that such a woman could never really understand the ardent
dreams of a woman of her mother-in-law's background, nor even the fierce desire
for social promotion that her newly-wed husband had displayed in the early days
of their marriage.

Her
own dreams were no different from those of any other village girl, she only
wanted to have a large number of children without having to worry about where
the next meal was coming from, and to live happily with her husband.

For
such a young woman, the year they had just spent together as a simple farming
couple must have been the happiest in her life.

Unlike
the previous year, when he had been straining to keep up the deportment and
dignity of a gentleman-scholar, it was only now that she experienced what
conjugal affection might mean; she also appreciated a life in which they lacked
less and less. At present the way she had spent the first months of their
marriage struck her as having been vain and foolish; she had worn herself out
looking after him, jumping every time he happened to glance at her or clear his
throat, abashed by her husband's incomprehensible obsession with a security
that depended on obtaining something, although it was not clear exactly what,
full as he was of ambitious dreams.

Even
if such a woman could not share deeply in his life, nobody was better placed to
be aware of the changes happening in him.

On
the day when he first drew his manuscript copy of the "Literary
Anthology" from the dust-covered wicker basket, she gazed at him with a
heart full of misgivings she could not understand and asked: "Will you try
again. . . to be a scholar?"

"No,
I just thought I'd fill the idle hours with some poetry."

He
had smiled awkwardly as he answered, then the other books came out one after
another, and he began to change.

She
would fall asleep in the evenings leaving him poring over a book, then wake to
the sound of repeated sighs and find him sitting with the book closed, sunk
deep in thought.

His
elder brother had likewise become aware of signs of a change in him, once the
light in his room began to stay burning late into the night. But by that time
his brother was sick. Perhaps he had caught their father's consumption, or
maybe the hard work of the previous summer had finally ruined his health, that
had never been very good, coming as it did on top of several years of hard
living and hard drinking in the marketplace; from early autumn that year his
brother began to spend more days lying sick in bed than up walking around in
good health, exactly like their father at the same age. His brother's spirit
suddenly weakened, too, and he began to turn to him for support as he had never
done before.

"You
know, you're the only one I can count on. It looks as though you'll have to
take charge of the household."

Even
when they were discussing quite minor questions his brother would simply tell
him: "I'm sick. You decide what's best," and suddenly look sad; he
was certainly in no state to scold or prevent him, even though he did not like
what he was doing. He often simply watched him from a distance, sometimes with
eyes full of the same misgivings as his wife, sometimes with what seemed a
deliberately heightened air of expectancy.

The
last person in the family to realize that he had plunged back into his books
and that his desire for social advancement was gradually rekindling, was his
mother. She was only too glad to welcome the change in him.

"Of
course! That's the way! We're not the kind of family that can be content to
remain mere peasants. Why, by now your second cousins probably have gold and
jade beads of rank dangling from their hats. On my side of the family there's
one of your age who's already passed the minor exam and one the primary. Study
with all your might, rise to high office, and set your mother free of her
life's burden of bitterness."

As
she spoke those words she seemed young and spirited again, quite unlike someone
who was already a grandmother.

Meanwhile,
the winter deepened.

His
brother's sickness and his wife's misgivings grew correspondingly deeper. But
his mother's hopes and his own tenacity burned with ever-increasing fire.

17.

The
long winter at the end of 1827 passed and the spring of the new year came. His
elder brother, who had alarmed them all by coughing up blood on three occasions
during the winter months, seemed to gain new energy once the warm spring winds
were blowing and was soon up and about again. It was as if he had never been
ill, and he displayed an unprecedented determination in getting everything
ready to resume work in the fields, sorting through the seeds and turning over
the manure.

In
retrospect it was clear that in doing so Pyong-ha had been squeezing out the
very last drops of his diminishing strength.

He
too was not the man he had been the year before. He showed no sign of going out
to work in the fields, but instead told his wife to prepare his things for a
long journey; by now her misgivings had turned into acute apprehension.

The
second part of the preliminary state examination was due to be held that year,
which was a special year for such examinations, so it might be assumed that he
left home and went up to Seoul in order to take the exam. There are obstacles
to such an interpretation, however. According to the generally accepted story
of his life, he ought by now to have been roaming in the Diamond Mountains;
there is also no record or oral tradition to the effect that he ever passed the
first part of the preliminary examination, without which he would not have been
qualified to take the second part.

There
is one weighty opinion to the effect that we may infer from his exceptional
talents that he had already taken the first part of the exam, since he was now
twenty-one.

If
this is the case, it follows that he might indeed have gone up to Seoul to take
the examination. However, another opinion stresses the absence of any record or
report to support this, and considers that he merely used the examination as a
pretext for going to Seoul. Obviously, these two theories diverge widely as far
as their contents are concerned; yet it is hardly necessary for us to be
over-concerned about which is correct. No matter which opinion one adopts, it
makes no difference to what follows in the story. For, quite simply, he did not
take the examination that year.

Some
may still be wondering by what kind of reasoning he managed to spur himself on
and rekindle the fires of social ambition.

After
all, the events of two years before, the poetry competition and the traumatic
encounter with Noh Jin, the scholar from Kwanso, had been of enormous
consequence, and not only for himself, since they had forced his brother to
change his job and driven the whole family into virtual seclusion. Yet it may
be that this problem too does not demand over-detailed investigation. The
various reasons that may have caused him to change his mind have already been
discussed, and the rest can be roughly conjectured from the grim intensity he
manifested in his quest for the restoration of his rank during the two years he
spent in Seoul. Besides which, the things people do in their lives are not
always founded on processes of rational self-persuasion.

Likewise
there is no need to linger over the reactions of the family when he announced
that he felt obliged to go up to Seoul to take the state examination. Naturally
his mother was glad; his simple wife felt troubled because it seemed to her
that her husband was being taken away from her for good by this cursed dream of
high office; his older brother sent him off with a blessing although he did not
approve, for his will and body had both been weakened by sickness; his
four-month-old son Hak-kyun showed his utter ignorance by a few meaningless
burbling noises.

His
brother Pyong-ha's eyes filled with tears as he took his leave, perhaps because
he realized that it might well be their last farewell.

Having
said goodbye to his family, he left behind him the valley in which he had lived
happily for a while, and set off into the springtime where flowers were just
beginning to bloom.

The
wings of his soul, that had been drawn in tightly during the long winter months,
once again stretched wide towards the outside world. But they were not yet the
wings of a poet.

18.

It
may sound very odd to people who are accustomed to the old legends about him,
if now they are told that after going up to Seoul for the state examination, he
spent more than two years staying as a house guest with a powerful man named
Ahn Ung-su.

Yet
in a volume entitled Haejang Anthology, a collection of works by Shin
Sok-Wu (*) who was one of Ahn Ung-su's literary associates, there is quite a
long piece entitled "The Story of Kim Dae-rip," which seems clearly
to be about him; there are a few points of contention, but even those who query
the identification generally accept that he is indeed the subject of the story.
Perhaps the makers of the traditional tales omitted this portion of his life
because the impression they had of him, based mainly on his later life as a
poet, did not correspond at all with this picture of a man in quest of a
government career, currying favour with the high and mighty and living as their
houseguest.

What,
then, of his plans to take the examination?

He
certainly went to the examination site, either because he wanted to see what it
was like after his previous experience, or because he really did intend to take
the examination. What he discovered there, though, was the true state of the
examination system, infinitely more rotten and corrupt than rumours had
suggested, certainly not a gateway opening onto high office in fulfillment of
his obsession with regaining a place in society.

To
begin with, there was no way a poor scholar just up from the country like him
could ever get a place to take the exam.

The
candidates were very numerous, and since it was important to occupy a good
place, it made all the difference between success and failure whether one
submitted one's roll of paper for the examination early or late; all the best
places were occupied since the night before by servants sent in by the sons of
powerful families. These would occupy wide areas, spreading mats and even
circling them with stakes; if anyone came near they would glare at them and
frighten them away.

Their
master, the young scion of some mighty family, would only arrive on the
following morning, accompanied by a crowd of attendants among whom might be
someone to compose the required poem, perhaps even a scribe to write it for
him! So the poor, helpless rural scholars, thrust aside by their might, had the
greatest difficulty squeezing themselves into the farthest corners of the
examination area; even if one managed to squeeze in somewhere, his writing
paper was scarcely put down before it was buried under a mountain of scrolls
belonging to other poor, helpless scholars, and reduced to tatters.

The
chaos in the public examination sytem was such that even the actual writing of
the answer was affected. Plagiarism, books smuggled in and consulted
surreptitiously, papers exchanged between candidates, or brought in from
outside already written, answers written in advance after gaining prior knowledge
of the examination topics: every kind of trickery was used, and all of it hard
to practice if you were not the son of a powerful family.

He
experienced a mixture of feelings on seeing with his own eyes a stste of
affairs he had hitherto only heard about. He might with difficulty attain a
certain level of learning, it would still be easier to pluck a star from the
sky than to regain his former rank by fighting his way through such a
pandemonium to pass the examination.

Whether
he went really intending to take the exam, or only to look, he was so full of
feelings of despair that he made no attempt to put even one foot inside the
examination site; he simply saw the scene from a distance, then headed for a
nearby tavern. He found it just as crammed full of candidates.

The
nearby taverns, naturally, and even those far from the examination site were
all crowded with country gentlemen in a situation similar to his own, busily
downing drinks full of discontent though it was still broad daylight. Clearly
the reports were true that had said there would be more candidates coming from
the countryside for the exam this year than from Seoul itself.

"Look,
old friend, you can write better than I can; can't you turn into another Yu
Kwang-ok and think up some good plan without dying for it? (Yu was the main
character in a classical novel, who wrote another person's examination answer
for money, then committed suicide when the authorities found him out). I
reckon I'll have to be looking round for a rich family to lean on from now
on."

He heard those words just as he had at last managed to squeeze into a
corner in the third or fourth tavern he tried.

It was nothing but a conversation between members of a group of young
scholars from the countryside who had given up any hope of trying to take the
examination; but for some reason he felt as if the words were addressed to him
directly. They seemed to be telling him that he would either have to take up
hack writing as a profession or wheedle his way into some powerful household as
a house guest and wait for his time to come.

Yet
when he became a house-guest of Ahn Ung-su soon afterwards, it was not the
result of abject grovelling, as has generally been imagined. At times he had
vaguely thought that even such a course would be better than nothing, but he
had never gone hanging around powerful people's houses, and even less had he
singled out Ahn Ung-su as someone he might approach. His meeting with Ahn was
more like a strange twist of fate, and it is more accurate to say that Ahn
Ung-su compelled him to come and stay with him.

Seeing
he was already in Seoul, he spent a few days looking around with little
enjoyment, then began the long trudge back to Yongwol.

He
reached the edge of the river at Dokso after half a day's journey, and found
there a group of young scholars on a poetry-writing excursion. The marquee
covering them, to say nothing of the lackeys hurrying to and fro with trays and
dishes, served to indicate that these were the offspring of influential
families.

Spring
had fully come; the breeze was balmy and the waters of the river, which had
before been chilled by the melting ice, were now warm enough for him to wash
his feet without discomfort. The hillsides that rose on the further side were
already greening with fresh shoots, while the lower slopes he glimpsed behind
him seemed ablaze with the fiery glow of azaleas. Time and place would both
have been ideal for a poetry-writing excursion, were it not for the fact that
the whole country was in the grip of a spring famine, so that the corpses of
people who had starved to death littered the landscape.

He
headed towards the group of scholars for a quite simple reason. He had walked a
long way that day and he was hoping he might get at least a bowl of wine to
quench his thirst. As yet he had had no experience of life on the road, but
since this was so obviously a gathering of gentlemen, it seemed unlikely that
they would prove ungenerous to one of their ilk.

As
so often happens in such circumstances, he found the way blocked by the
servants busily in attendance about the marquee.

There
is a saying to the effect that the servant holding the horse's bridle has more
power than the nobleman riding it, and here the servants tried at first to
drive him away like some kind of tramp.

He
had already experienced hardships in life, but this was the first time he had
encountered such an unfriendly welcome and he was not going to take it lying
down. He protested and was about to turn away when one of the group looked up
and called across.

"What's
going on?"

"He's
not begging for rice or soup, Sir, he's asking for wine!"

The
young servant who had blocked his approach so officiously now raised his voice
as if denouncing him. But the voice to which he was replying had been unexpectedly
gentle.

"To
judge by his clothes, he must be a gentleman. Usher him him in!"

This
young gentleman was none other than Ahn Ung-su. In those days there was nothing
more common than a poor wandering scholar, so that costume was in itself of no
significance; and yet, guided perhaps by some kind fate, Ahn Ung-su invited him
to join the party. He soon realized, from a sarcastic remark made by one of the
other scholars, that it was an extraordinary welcome for a passer-by who had
merely approached in the hope of a bowl of wine.

"My,
Bok-kyong (that was Ahn's pen-name) is being generous again!"

As
if in indication of the feelings of the company, Ahn Ung-su excepted, he was
given a place in a far corner of the marquee, while the food and drink he was
served were clearly of the kind destined for passing travellers.

If
he had been then the man he later became, such a level of welcome would have
been quite sufficient to content him, but in those days he was still a young
and inexperienced scholar.

Reluctantly
suppressing a proud urge to kick aside the table and leave, he surveyed the
company, with their costly clothing and healthy complexions. It was as he had
supposed from his first distant view of them; they were indeed the sons of high
ranking families, and the stubborn sense of his own worth that he had
previously been feeling suddenly changed into a fierce desire to challenge
them.

"This
is a poetry-writing party, you know. You're a scholar too, so won't you compose
a poem?"

One
of the party addressed him curtly, as if testing him.

"Would
you prefer it to be in five-character lines, or seven-character lines?"

"As
you like."

He
had never practiced impromptu composition, nor learned to improvise, yet a poem
in seven-syllable lines sprang into his mind without much difficulty, spurred
perhaps by pride and a spirit of rivalry.

This
river has no red cliffs,

but
riding a boat, the fun's the same.

The
place seems near Hsinfeng,

the
wine flows so generously!

In
a world like this, there's no clear distinction

between
a hero, and an orator.

Wealth
makes you Hsiang Yü, and wine Su Ch'in (*).

The
style was not really appropriate for such an occasion, but it was well-fitted
to serve as a weapon against those who had been mocking him. A few of the young
men present listened to his poem with expressions of disapproval, but most
found it entertaining for a scholars' poetry excursion.

In
particular, Ahn Ung-su was glad to see that he had not been mistaken about him,
and refused to hear of him leaving. Two brothers who happened to be present,
Shin Sok-woo and Shin Sok-hee, came to Ahn's assistance and had no trouble in
getting his new guest drunk.

He
was certainly in no hurry to return home, so he gradually succombed to the
charm of the company's friendly attitude towards him, to the springtime mood,
and the effects of drinking, composing several more poems in the course of the
day. Some followed the conventions of such gatherings, some were simply
improvisations noted down as they arose. One poem in particular was
instrumental in bringing him into Ahn's household, the poem "Looking into
Myself, I Sing," with its two stanzas of four seven-character lines:

When
I gaze up smiling at the blue sky above,

I
seem to forget the things of the world,

But
if I think of the path ahead,

everything
looks so far away.

Living
in poverty, all I hear is my wife's chiding;

But
as I drink madly,

the
market-women's mockery grows worse.

Watching
all those worldy cares

was
like a day when flowers fall;

I
regarded my life as a moonlit evening sky.

This
is all I get for my life's sins and virtue.

Slowly
I realize: blue cloud dreams lie beyond my sphere.

When he recited those lines under a
growing intoxication, foretelling and exaggerating his uncertain future
prospects, Ahn Ung-su began to question him more closely about his
circumstances, with all the compassion proper to the son of such a noble
family; for he had sensed from the very beginning this passing stranger's
misfortune. Ahn could easily accommodate one extra house-guest but, more than
that, he really did want to help him by having him near him.

On
first edging his way into the party, he had presented himself as Kim Ran (Ran
meaning "a little bell"), adding that his pen-name was Yi-myong
(meaning "ringing"). Since these were people he would part company
with after a bowl of wine, he made up playful names for himself, calling
himself "a little bell ringing." The reasons why he subsequently lied
about his home and family origins in response to Ahn Ung-su's questions,
however, were different from those which led him to conceal his name earlier in
the day. Tipsy as he was, he soon sensed that Ahn was asking questions with the
thought of helping him by having him near him, so he made up a story about
belonging to an insignificant family of local gentry from the town of Kwangjuin
order to conceal his true origin, that had caused him so much pain. As he had
anticipated, once the day's excursion was over, Ahn Ung-su took him into his
household. That was the beginning of his time as a house guest.

Certainly,
he was not completely innocent of all thought of using whatever powers Ahn
might wield as a member of a very powerful family. It was not something he had
gone grovelling after, but when the opportunity arose he grasped at it,
determined not to let it slip by, holding on to it more firmly, indeed, than
others might have done.

He
was only a guest, yet the concern that Ahn showed for him was unlike anything
that he manifested towards other house guests. The Haejang Anthology
that was mentioned earlier contains these lines in the "Story of Kim
Tae-rip":

".
. . Alas! He had truly astounding talents. Yi-myong was the pen-name of Kim
Ran; from time to time my brother and I had occasion to meet him while he was a
guest of Bok-kyong (Ahn Ung-su), when we were still young; in those days,
Yi-myong was devoting all his energies to competition poetry. His scope was
vast and far-reaching, and his skill so exceptional that every one of us looked
forward to the time when he would become a great master. In addition to writing
in the formal examination style, he also applied himself to the study of the
Great Classics, so that day after day you could always hear his voice ringing
out as he read, while his hands knew no rest as he copied for himself the One
Hundred Scholars. He wrote an elegant hand, neat enough to be termed finely
written. . . ."

Obviously, the main
aim of this passage is to laud his learning and talents; yet at the same time
it gives a glimpse of the kind of activities his position as house-guest
allowed. In short, he was able to spend the whole day in his room, reading and
writing, a privileged guest indeed.

It
is not hard to suppose, given the way in which he spent his days, that the
fires of ambition and intense desire for social advancement were once again
burning bright within him.

He
must have thought that, with an extra degree of refinement to his learning and
the support of a family as powerful as Ahn's, he might after all be able to
envisage success in the state examination.

Yet
the report of events contained in the Haejang Anthology leaves readers
completely in the dark on one major point; it tells almost nothing about the
reason why he left Ahn Ung-su's house at the end of two years without any
tangible gain. It simply quotes him as blaming the unkind treatment he received
from Ahn and Shin Sok-hee after they discovered his humble origins. But that
really makes no sense at all.

They
had both been told from the very first that he belonged to an insignificant family
of local gentry from Kwangju; it seems unreasonable, to say the least, to claim
that as the reason for suddenly mistreating and making life unbearable for a
guest who over the past two whole years had been valued and cared for.

19.

In
order to discover the real reasons that compelled him to put an end to his time
as a guest in Ahn Ung-su's household, it may be profitable to examine the
hidden meanings of his words, rather than what he actually said:

"In
my youth, I studied poetry with all my might; I went up to Seoul and tried my
luck there. I was closely associated with the poets and notable scholars of the
time. Ahn "Bok-kyong" Ung-su and Shin "Sa-su" Sok-hee were
renowned, and I was close to them. They assisted me in many ways and I enjoyed
their company. But later, once they learned that I belonged to a modest family
from Kwangju, they began to treat me unkindly. In turn, when I saw that they no
longer accepted me I realized at once that I could no longer rely on their
patronage for my social career.It
was a sorrowful and painful experience. In the end I went nearly mad; unable to
endure the disappointment and misery I was feeling, I decided to follow my own
impulses. Yes, Bok-kyong and Sa-su helped bring out my disease. . . ."

In
these words, spoken much later to Lee Sang-su, a scholar also known as
"Nak-bong," what strikes the reader particularly are the words about
"my disease" that "Bok-kyong and Sa-su helped bring out."

Undoubtedly,
the disease in question was a psychological one, provoked by his inability to
regain his initial rank in society; if Ahn Ung-su and Shin Sok-hee helped bring
it out, that suggests that he had already been suffering from it. In other
words, it is better to say that, while the ambition and fighting spirit that
had come struggling back to life were crushed once again by something, the
unkindness of the two noblemen increased until he could take no more and had to
leave.

That
was true. From the moment he became Ahn's guest, he devoted his every last ounce
of strength to studying, driven by a new prospect of restoration of his rank,
but suffered some extremely bitter setback before two years were over. It all
began in a chance encounter with some of his distant relatives of the Changdong
clan.

When
he first learned how much of a shortcut to success the backing of a powerful
family offered, his thoughts had naturally turned to his grandfather's
relatives, who included Kim Cho-sun, the king's father-in-law.

They
were not at that time in sole control of the court as they later publicly were,
but they were nonetheless one of the most powerful families in the capital. Yet
the memory of how deeply his father had resented their heartless attitude,
still speaking of it on the day before he died, had always kept him from
approaching them.

It
seemed most unlikely that they would suddenly begin to overflow with kindness
on account of one extra degree of distance.

However,
one day Kim Chwa-gun "Ha-ok," the son of the king's father-in-law (*)
happened to visit Ahn Ung-su's house, so at last they met. Ahn summoned him
before Kim Chwa-gun, as he always did when he had a visitor, praising his
learning and scholarly achievements. Ahn probably thought that it might even
prove useful to him.

There
in Ahn's reception room, Kim showed no particular interest in him. He merely
looked, nodded as such visitors always did, then went away after completing the
business that had brought him there.

Kim
Chwa-gun was ten years older than himself; at that time he occupied a post of
the second rank, mainly granted on account of his birth. Later, he was to serve
three times as prime minister and was a central power-broker during the reign
of King Ch'ol-jong.

Being
of exceptional intelligence and possessing a sharp pair of eyes, Kim Chwa-gun
saw at a glance who he really was. Presumably their not so distant
blood-relationship played its part. In the presence of Ahn Ung-su, he betrayed
nothing, but once home, he sent a steward to summon him. Kim Chwa-gun naturally
did this under cover of some business so that Ahn Ung-su would think nothing of
it.

"Which
are you? Pyong-ha? Or Pyong-yon?"

A
trace of apprehension had stirred within him and his blood had run cold as he
hesitantly approached the house; the moment he entered the reception parlour
where Kim's father himself was sitting in the place of honour, Kim Chwa-kun
fired the question at him.

The
question was so icy, so incisive, that he never for one moment thought of
insisting on the false name he had given to Ahn Ung-su; Kim was truly a terrifying
figure.

"I
am Pyong-yon."

When
he made the inevitable reply, Kim Cho-sun, who had been scrutinizing him
silently, suddenly began to shout, trembling with rage to the very tip of his
beard.

"What?
An ill-mannered scoundrel like you, changing your name and sneaking into a
nobleman's guest-rooms? Speak up, young wretch, what are you after?"

Fierce
as an autumn frost, the voice belied utterly the general report of his
character, according to which he was so indulgent that he could never
accomplish affairs of state properly. There was no trace of the warmth that
might have been expected from a grandfatherly relative.

He
remained silent.

"You
mean to tell me it was for nothing more than three square meals a day that
you've been licking Ahn Ung-su's arse all this time?"

Still
he said nothing.

"You
rascal! Do you dare consider yourself some kind of gentleman scholar, for ever
talking about propriety and decorum, shame and honour? You? Why, it was only by
an immense act of favour on the part of the state that you were spared from
sharing your grandfather's fate; how in the world could you dare set foot in
the capital or look for anything more? Remove yourself from here at once! If
you ever come sneaking around Ahn Bok-kyong's house again, I'll have you
arrested and flogged!"

Far
more deeply shocking than all that, though, was something that Kim Chwa-gun
said to him as he escorted him out; his ears were still burning from the fiery
dressing-down he had just received.

"I'm
sorry to say this, but you must go back home at once. The court is not ready to
accept you. Like father was saying, go home, live quietly out of sight, and
think yourself lucky not to have been executed; at least you can perpetuate
your family line. You are only going to hurt people, if you persist in your
impossible ambitions. You'll hurt yourself, you'll hurt Bok-kyong, you'll hurt
our whole clan. Did you really think that an axe through the neck was the only
way for people to get hurt?"

As
they crossed the garden of the men's quarters, Kim Chwa-kun entreated him once
more. His voice had grown gentler than it had been at first and this encouraged
him to venture a question:

"Was
our grandfather's crime. . . so very terrible, then?"

Kim
Chwa-gun stopped, looked at him piercingly, then gently asked:

"Do
you think that his only crime was not to have died when he encountered the
rebels? To have surrendered to Hong Kyong-rae?"

"Why.
. . is there something more?"

"Oh
yes, much more. Your grandfather did not simply surrender to the rebels, he
took a position in their organisation, he even wrote something for them, a
manifesto urging the foolish peasantry to join them and rise up together."

"What?"

"Oh,
there's more to come. When the tide began to go against them, he returned to
the loyalist camp, committing an even more perfidious crime as he did so. He
got a certain peasant, one Cho by name, to bring him the head of the rebel's
chief-of-staff, Kim Chang-si, promising to give him a thousand copper coins. He
tried to deceive the king himself by producing it as if all the credit were
his. Do you really believe that the world is foolish enough to offer a
government position to the grandson of such a scheming traitor, less that
twenty years afterwards?"

He
heard nothing more of what was said after that. All the extra details about his
grandfather's crime that Kim Chwa-gun had supplied were completely new to him.

He
could not be sure if his father had known or not; obviously he would never have
told his sons, or their mother. He clutched at his breast, wracked with a pain
far greater than that which he had experienced four years earlier, when Noh-jin
had chided him in that tavern at Chongson. As he tottered out through the main
gateway, he heard Kim Chwa-gun add from behind him, in tones of calculated
regret:

"You
for your part, and we for ours, we all want this to be an end of it. We don't
want people to talk about us in connection with that disgraceful episode ever
again. . . ."

Had
he been the man he was a few years earlier, he would surely have left Ahn
Ung-su's house straight away. But he was twenty-three now, and had tasted what
the world had to offer, not only the bitter but the sweet, too. He still
ventured to hope for the best, not having as yet had a chance to put his
patrons' goodwill to any test.

In
addition to Ahn Ung-su, he enjoyed the favourable opinion of Shin Sok-woo and
his brother, as well as other sons of high families, all of whom admired his
talents and learning. He felt that they might still be ready to help him, that
it would perhaps make no difference even if they knew just who he was.

His
hopes were in vain. Less than three days after his encounter with Kim Chwa-gun,
their attitudes had already begun to change. First, Ahn Ung-su began to act
coolly; then Shin Sok-hee and the others withdrew their goodwill. It was clear
that Kim Chwa-gun, even without directly revealing his real identity, had
fatally influenced them against him.

Soon
all their goodwill, that had been diminishing daily, had changed into indirect
hostility; then he knew that the last strand of hope that he had desperately
been clinging hold of, had finally, mercilesslybeen cut.

He
realized that as a mere house guest he could obtain nothing for himself, even
if he had been staying with a family ten times the rank of Ahn Ung-su's.

Finally,
two weeks after his meeting with Kim Chwa-gun, he silently tied his belongings
together into a bundle and left Ahn Ung-su's house. It was in the sixth month
of the year.

Sometimes
human emotions undergo strange distortions. This is especially the case where
resentment or hatred are involved; so it was, no doubt, with the bitterness he
harboured towards Ahn Ung-su and Shin Sok-hee. Judging in rational terms, it
seems obvious that he should have felt more resentment towards Kim Chwa-gun;
but in actual fact the bitterness he felt towards Ahn and Shin was far greater.
And his feelings did not modify with the passage of time. That is what he meant
when he blurted out that "Ahn Ung-su and Shin Sok-hee helped bring out my
disease."

20.

It
may well be that his decision to live in ways that would deviate decisively
from the norms of the period was taken at about this time, just when his last
attempt at social promotion had gone drifting away like so much foam. Indeed,
when he hurriedly left Ahn Ung-su's house he had not yet decided that he wanted
to go home. At that time there was only one option open to unfortunate
intellectuals when everything had failed them, and that was the lonely choice
of what was usually called "house-guesting;" he already had a fairly
clear idea of what such a life involved and felt quite strongly drawn by it.

However,
he belatedly received news that his brother had died and that meant postponing
such a choice at least for the time being.

When
he left Ahn's house he set out on a round of taverns, intent on drowning his
rage and resentment. It was on perhaps the third day that by pure chance he ran
into an acquaintance from their years in the streets of Yongwol, from whom he
learned that his elder brother had died some six months previously, at the end
of the previous year; he had not been informed because no one in his family
knew where he was.

He
threw aside the cup of wine he was holding and set off for Oduni without delay.
When all was said and done, his brother had had a truly wretched life.

Their
ways of expressing it might differ, but the resentment his brother had
harboured in his breast to the very end was identical with his own. While he
had consumed his bitterness in a fierce desire for restoration, his brother had
only turned it against himself, deliberately setting out to destroy his own
life.

Above
all, he felt bitter about the various kinds of wickedness his brother had
needlessly committed in the course of his self-destruction, and the way in
which people would, as ever, make them the basis of their final evaluation of
his brother's character.

Those
rowdy scenes, not all equally necessary, in the days when he was constantly
hanging around the streets and market-place. At the slightest excuse, his
brother would grab other merchants by the collar, he had even been known to
wield a knife. The drinking that all their neighbours used to shake their heads
about. For his brother had begun to drink to punish himself even before his bones
were fully set, and once he had drunk he would become noisy and violent.

Then
there had been his marriage. Their mother had always striven to maintain at
least the basic rules of the clan, even though they had fallen so low, but she
had been forced to let her eldest son set up house apart. There had been better
possible brides, yet his brother had insisted on marrying the daughter of a
blind fortuneteller who was the laughing-stock of the whole town. To say
nothing of all those many rash, violent acts which brought a frown even to his
brow, obliging his to concur with the general opinion people had of his
brother, although at the same time he could to some degree understand what he
must be feeling. His brother got free of all that once they moved to Oduni, but
unfortunately there was nobody up there who had known his brother previously,
who might have revised their evaluation of his true character.

So
in the end his brother would be remembered by most of those who knew him simply
as that Yongwol market-place ruffian, a man who seemed sometimes wild and
sometimes downright servile, who was always called "Pyong-ha" in a
familiar, slighting way by children and adults alike.

Memories
of the many hard and bitter times he had shared with his brother made him shed
frequent tears along his homeward way. The twenty years between that winter
evening when he was four and his departure from Oduni passed in succession
before his eyes, making his heart ache.

Birds
at dusk perch to sleep on a single bough.

At
daybreak one by one each goes its separate ways.

Don't
you see? Human life follows selfsame laws.

What's
the use of soaking your sleeves with tears?

He
tried to console himself with such old verses but as soon as a new memory of
his brother's face loomed up, he could not help bursting into tears again. He
hastened on, heedless of nightfall, but on arriving home he found something at
least as deeply shocking as his brother's death waiting for him.

His
mother, who was approaching fifty by now, had one day suddenly left and
returned to her family home at Hongsong in Chungchong Province.

"When
a person becomes a daughter-in-law in another family, that entails less the
enjoyment of inherited wealth than being entrusted with a duty to maintain that
family. Moreover, the maintaining of a family involves not merely the
preservation of the blood-line but, most precious of all, the preservation of
its honour.

"When
I married into the Kim clan your family was recognized as one of the highest
ranking in the capital. But less than seven years after my marriage came the
tragedy of our degradation and two generations in succession died before their
due time. Twenty years later, although the cause of our disgrace was an
ancestor's misdeed, today the duty of raising up this family has been entrusted
to your mother.

"But
what do we see? Pyong-ha is dead and we are without any news of you, on whom
all your mother's hopes reposed. Certainly, Pyong-du and Hak-kyun are still
alive, but at nearly sixteen Pyong-du is a yokel unable to read even the first
thousand Chinese characters; as for Hak-kyun, he belongs to the next generation
and your mother is too old now to be able to transfer her hopes to such a tiny
child. In consequence, your mother has been unable to fulfill her duty.

"Now
the proper course when a person has failed to fulfill her duty as
daughter-in-law is that she should be sent back to her original family; it is
wrong to try to indulge one's regrets by arguing that there is no one left to
send me away. Therefore, your mother has decided for herself to leave here and
return to her former home, begging the spirits of your ancestors to forgive
her. Words fail me when I think of the homeward journey, already almost fifty
and grey haired as I am; but since I was unable to do what had to be done, how
could I ever presume to join the spirits of the Kim family when I die? All I
can still hope is that you quickly attain high rank, effacing your mother's
sins, and summon me back into your father's family. There is no other way for us
to meet as mother and son, so I beg you to attend closely to my words. If ever
you were to come for me grey-haired, with foolish filial piety, I would take a
knife and fall on it, rather than live to set eyes on you again. . ."

Such
was the gist of the letter, written in the vernacular alphabet, which his
mother had left for him with his wife before she left. He read it in a state of
utter horror.

He
had been about to free himself for ever from half a lifetime's vain pursuit,
but now it was as though a hand had firmly seized him once again.

At
least, his mother's letter had the effect of making him hesitate for a while
before finally deviating from the ways of the world. Unlike when he had left
Ahn's house, he now spent nearly a year confined in his old home, apparently
planning something again. As a result, he began to show a close concern for his
family.

He
registered his own first-born son, Hak-kyun, under the name of his elder
brother, who had died childless; when his second son, Ik-kyun, was born, he
registered him under his own name. It was only when all that was done, that he
finally left home. Considering how much his leaving home signified a permanent
break with his family and with ordinary life, it is not easy to explain such a
concern for the future of his clan. The family was the fundamental unit, the
basis of the entire structure of organized society, which suggests that even
now he still somewhere retained traces of attachment to his former dreams of
promotion or restoration.

No
matter how anguished his mother's hopes, the fact of the matter was that what
could not be done could not be done. Probe and search though he might, there
was no way by which he could penetrate the system or regain admittance to the
higher ranks of society; once that was clearly established, he at last put into
practice the option of deviating from every norm, that had been tempting him
for so long. It was early autumn in the next year, less than a hundred days
since Ik-kyun had been born.

It
was now, as he prepared to set out, that he put on for the first time the large
bamboo hat destined in later times to give him the nickname which replaced his
true name completely. He wore it to conceal himself from Heaven's gaze, to
which he felt that he could no longer expose himself with a clear conscience,
on account of the sin of disloyalty to the throne he had inherited with his
blood from their grandfather, and the sin against family piety of which he
himself had been guilty towards his grandfather, to which had to be added a
further sin against piety since he had been unable to fulfil his mother's
lifelong hopes.

Perhaps
there was yet another feeling of guilt he hoped to hide under that all-covering
bamboo shield, that arising from the pity inspired by his wife as she saw him
off, trembling with a nameless dread yet never once asking him not to go, with
Hak-kyun out playing childish games and little Ik-kyun nothing more than a
new-born baby.

21.

He
had set out. Away from home and kindred, from the past and its wounded,
shattered ambitions. But he was still only someone deviating from the norm, not
yet fully a poet. Needless to say, he frequently wrote poems, but only as one
necessary accomplishment of a scholar or a pastime suitable for a gentleman,
their dominant emotion was not essentially poetic, but the sentiment of
resentment and idleness which now replaced the ambition that had previously
burned in him.

On
careful inspection, it rather seems that even his deviation was not initially
something permanent. The conjecture that it might have been of limited
duration, with room for a later return, is rendered feasible by the fact that
after he left home, the first place he visited was the Diamond Mountains,
famous for their scenic beauty. There was the feeling that he was leaving the
dust-shrouded world behind him for a time, there was evidently also the idea
that once the wounds of his heart had been healed by attaining affinity with
Nature, he would return and start something new.

In
the legends about his life, he and the Diamond Mountains are inseparably
related. During the rest of his life he visited the Diamond Mountains dozens of
times, giving rise to a host of anecdotes. There are likewise several written
records preserving details about that aspect of his life; in particular, there
is this passage in the Nokcha Anthology by his contemporary, Hwang Oh, a
ruined gentleman-scholar of the time:

".
. .In the middle of the night, he
kicked me, asking if I had ever seen the Diamond Mountains. I replied that I had
not yet seen the Diamond Mountains, reputedly so fine that they can never be
forgotten, even in dreams, Kim the Bamboo Hat stared at me piercingly and said,
'I see the Diamond Mountains every year. Sometimes I see them twice in one
year, in the spring and again in the autumn.'"

Judging
by such an incident, the Diamond Mountains were not merely the scene of all
kinds of strange episodes in his life, they appear to have been nothing less
than one of the very birthplaces of his poetic vision.

The
anecdotes he left behind in the Diamond Mountains have come down to the world
transformed in various ways. Their chronological order is so confused that it
is hard to tell which if any of them refers to that first visit. One tale has
become especially famous on account of its link with his poetry, tells how one
old monk who boasted of being the best poet in the Diamond Mountains lost all
his teeth, but it is only guesswork to say that this happened when he was
young, and there are absolutely no grounds for saying it happened when he was
visiting the Mountains for the first time. But since it is connected with his
poetry, it will be meaningful to relate it here.

The
story tells how, when he came across that proud monk in the Diamond Mountains,
they agreed to a wager whereby they would continue a poem line by line in
succession, and whenever one of them could not go on, he would pull out one of
his own teeth. The match ended in less than half a day, with the old monk
pulling out with his own hand the small number of teeth he still had left. This
may well really have happenened, for he had mastered the rhetorical style of
poetry required for the government examinations, and excelled in the aesthetic
form of parallel couplets; even if the story is exaggerated, the incident to
some degree serves to suggest the level of his poetic achievement at that time.

As
for the other incidents that happened in the Diamond Mountains, the reporting
of them can be left to the colourful legends about him. The main concern here
is his life as a poet, not as a buffoon, a philanderer, a beggar, or a sharp
tongue. There is just one episode that needs to be told in detail, that
involving his encounter with the Old Drunkard. For it was that meeting that
finally led him to take the turning that made a poet of him.

22.

He
met the Old Drunkard at the end of his first visit to the Diamond Mountains,
while he was on the way down. He was well aware that a path led directly from
Nae-Kumgang, the Inner Diamond peaks, via Wei-Kumgang, the Outer Diamond and
Hae-Kumgang, the Sea Diamond, as far as Tongchon, but he decided for various
reasons to retrace instead the route that had led him to Piro Peak. He had been
so late leaving home that if he took the other road he might be obliged to
spend the whole winter in the Kwanbuk region, which had a terrible reputation
for being bitterly cold. With his little experience of a wandering life, he did
not fancy the idea at all. He had not so far formulated any firm thoughts about
never returning home, and money was running out too, which helped him make up
his mind.

When
he arrived back at the small inn near the entrance to the mountain, that he had
left not many days before, it was sunset on a late autumn day towards the end
of the tenth month. With the end of the season, there were no new visitors
coming to the mountains, the inn was deserted. He ordered something to drink
from the woman there, who had recognized him, and stretched out on the floor of
the empty room. Suddenly he noticed a poem, four lines of seven characters,
scrawled on the wall:

Reading
books, my hair has turned grey;

in
sword-practice, the year's come to an end.

Sky
and earth are boundless, my regret is unending.

After
madly downing ten gallons of red wine from town,

With
bamboo hat on I came to the Diamond Mountains

in
the autumn wind.

The
brushwork looked familiar. Suddenly it dawned on him that it was a poem he had
written himself when he was on his way to the mountains. He had left behind a
paper bearing a few characters scrawled in a drunken moment; the landlady must
have picked it up and pasted it to the wall after his departure. The first line
was rather an exaggeration, seeing he was only twenty-four, but the overall
effect was too good for him to have forgotten it like that.

He
was about to call the woman and thank her for the care she had shown in saving
it and pasting it to the wall, when she came in, carrying a little table with
his drink. It was so generously loaded with dishes of wild vegetables that he
was obliged to begin by remarking on that.

"The
old man out there kept on at me so. . . and there's a pheasant I've got, too,
I'll bring it in as soon as it's cooked."

She
gestured behind her with her chin, and he saw an elderly man in a plain jacket
following behind her, his age not easy to guess at. He had not seen the old man
the last time he was there. His face made an unexpectedly eerie impression on
him; it was so grey that the individual features failed to stand out clearly.
It was as if the skin had been soaked in water and faded by the sun.

"She
tells me you're the young scholar who left that poem behind. . .may I sit down?"

He
was already in the room before he spoke in a slightly hoarse voice. The old man
did not glance in that direction, but it was obvious he was referring to the
poem on the wall.

"No
good at all. . . good to light the fire with; I don't know how to thank you for
not burning it, and giving it such an honoured place, too."

"Oh,
it's much better used this way than for lighting fires. Sticking it there means
we save the price of papering the wall for a few years. There are far too many
people who scribble nonsense all over the walls and dare to call it poetry. I
hope that when they see that, it'll stop their scrawling."

The
old man gave no sign of positive praise but his hearer still felt he meant to
flatter him highly, and was searching for a modest reply when he spoke again,
seemingly talking to himself:

"After
all, you need a fair amount of skill, just to imitate the Chinaman style!"

That
took him down a peg or two. It seemed that what he had taken for praise merely
meant that he had managed to imitate the Chinese! The esteem he cherished for
himself as a poet since his days as Ahn Ung-su's house-guest was already
beginning to rebel inwardly.

The
old man paid no attention to his feelings. He filled the wine bowl and drained
it before offering to fill it again for him to drink.

"So
how was the Mountain?"

The
question came out in a casual tone, as he was confusedly sipping his wine. It
sounded as though the man couldn't care less about the reply, but was merely
speaking for the sake of saying something, while the style suggested seniority.
Again his pride was touched. In a flash his hurt feelings produced a couple of
lines of poetry, with which he decided to give that self-important old fellow a
taste of his own medecine.

"Well
Sir, since I see you know something about poetry, there is something I would
like to ask you, if I may; actually, while I was up in the Diamond Mountains I
composed the first two lines of a poem, but I've been racking my mind for days
now to find the other two I need to complete it."

"I
only asked how the mountain was, and now you suddenly start on about poems. .
."

"I
wanted to find a single quatrain that would portray the mountain in all its
beauty, but I can't think of a proper turn and conclusion. . ."

His
words were overflowing with civility, but they hid a malicious trap. If I
provide the introduction and development, they implied, I challenge you to
provide the rest. He wanted to pay the man back for daring to suggest that his
own poem had been a mere imitation of a Chinese model. The old man may or may
not have realized his intention, he replied with a faint smile:

"Right,
let's hear your half of the mountain first."

He
cleared his throat and began to recite:

Pine
pine, fir fir, crag crag, swirl.

Stream
stream, hill hill, place place, strange.

After
he had finished, he tried to hide a complacent smile. He felt intensely
satisfied at having been able to express in that short moment so much of the
splendour he had been quite unable to put into words during his wanderings up
in the hills.

But
the change in the old man's appearance was extraordinary. Th expression on his
face suddenly grew clearer, he remained motionless for a moment, then he sighed
as he said:

"Why
not? That's enough, there's nothing more to say."

"But
there are the clouds and the birds, the hermitages, the monks."

"They're
all superfluous."

The
old man stayed scrutinizing him for a while, then shook his head as he
murmured:

"Well
I never! All the depth of the Book of Odes in you, and so young, too!"

"You
are flattering me, sir. A mere frivolous solecism..."

"Not
at all. It's the same principle as when we represent the blossom of peach trees
by repeating twice the character for 'burn' or the drooping branches of willows
by doubling the character for 'depend.' You've brought the entire mountain
together with just two pine trees, two fir trees, two crags. You've represented
the mountain's twelve thousand peaks and eleven hundred waterfalls by simply
writing 'water' twice, and 'mountain' twice."

There
was a pause.

"Yes,
that's the Book of Odes. It's the same depth as when it expresses the fact that
every being in the world is different by combining the characters 'three' and
'different'. . ."

He
shuddered inwardly at the turn things were taking, not because he was being
evaluated too highly, but because the old man's approach to poetry was so far
removed from what he had expected.

When
the man had come into the room, he had not seemed in any way remarkable. His
uncovered topknot and plain dress had not helped, of course, while the way his
face seemed bloated and faded at the same time, with its strangely indistinct
features, had been far from what he felt a true scholar ought to look like. He
had taken him for one of those village scholars who pretends to know a lot or
else a reject from the local civil service examinations who likes to show off
to the rural dunces. The way the woman referred to him as "the old
man" had only encouraged the same conclusion.

His
sudden display of pride, on closer examination, had been inspired by the same
negative reaction, so that when the old man said that what he had tried to
express in his poem was enough, he had thought himself justified, believing
that the real reason was his inability to complete it. It was only when he
heard the man commenting so deeply on the poem that his inflated ego had begun
to shrink. He suddenly recalled his encounter with the scholar Noh Jin from the
Kwanso region in that inn at Chongson some four or five years before.

"I
am at a loss for words. In actual fact, that was nothing but a sort of comic
poem, composed on the spur of the moment, without any deep thought put into it
at all."

"I
know. That's why I was so surprised. That kind of thing doesn't come by study;
you've got to be born with it."

The
old man paused and again scrutinized him closely for a time. Then, abruptly,
after downing another bowl of wine, as if struck by a sudden thought, he asked:

"So
who are you, then?"

"A
mere nameless scholar whose career has been blocked," he replied with
increased civility.

"That's
not what I meant. I meant your poetry. You must have started off like any other
scholar in this country, writing poems in the rhetorical style needed for the
government examinations. You've given that up. Why?"

"I
venture to say that I've come to see that high office is beyond my reach."

"High
office beyond your reach? You're still young, you seem to be very talented, why
do you say that?"

Normally,
when he reached this point he would conceal the truth about himself, or let his
pent-up anger overflow. Strangely enough, though, this time he was able to
recount his life's story without doing either. One reason may be that his heart
had been unburdened to some extent by his recent wanderings up and down the
Inner Diamond valleys, weeping and laughing like a maniac. But equally
important was the way he found himself drawn to the old man by some strange
sense of affinity.

For
the first time ever, he talked about his life's pursuits and setbacks without
hiding or exaggerating anything. As he spoke, the old man kept nodding
silently. He was puzzled to notice the way the lines of the man's face were
becoming clearer as it took on a more lively, pinkish hue, while an intense
interest in his words shone in his eyes. Obviously not just the result of
drinking, it seemed as though some kind of inner light was transfiguring the
man's ageing flesh.

"After
I saw that poem you left behind when you went away last time, I realized it was
only the outer shell, I wanted to meet the young man with such a sure grip on
his poems. And suddenly, here we are. With you, I feel that I can talk about
poetry," the old man said, smiling and looking about thirty years younger
than before. He found it hard to understand the change that had come over the
man. As he talked on, he had himself grown increasingly worked up without quite
realizing it, his strange feeling had grown more intense. Caught between his
own excitement and the strange feeling, for a time he was lost for words, while
the old man began to question him in intimate tones, as if talking with a
friend of his own age:

"So
what is poetry, for you?

The
old man looked ready to agree with absolutely anything he might say.

He
did not want to disappoint him, if he could avoid it, but he could not make up
things he did not feel or express ideas he did not believe in. For him, poetry
was "a means by which those above teach those below, while those below
satirize the faults of those above" and at the same time "a way to
show the laws of conjugal life, promote veneration of parents, strengthen
family ties, and bring beauty to edification," as well as an art
"using metaphors to suggest other similar things, whereby the rise and
decline of customs may be observed, each person's inner resources may be
refined and improved, while faults in the goverment of those above may be reproved."
Poetry was a guide to what was right and good, the way for a gentleman to gain
that name, something with which to polish one's true nature, and express inner
thoughts.

"I
wonder. Is all that still true of your poetry? Like wearing a high hat or having
a top-knot, like having precious beads dangling from your hat, and wearing
pendants, all just because you're a gentleman, a nobleman, a scholar, a man?
Something to slash, like a sword; to thrust, like a spear; to lash, like a
whip? Just a way to show off your loyalty or your piety, to prove how righteous
you are, how prudent you are, how talented you are, how learned you are?"

"That
is what I have mostly heard and learned. . ."

"Do
flowers bloom for the king, or birds sing to extol the merits of teachers? Do
clouds gather because rulers err, and does rain fall in accordance with their
subjects' complaints? Is the sunset beautiful in honour of justice, does the
moon shine to celebrate decorum? Is the melancholy of a spring day with petals
falling all on account of concern for the nation's well-being? Is the sadness
of an autumn night with leaves falling only caused by grief for parents?"

"In
that case, sir, what is true poetry in your opinion?"

"True
poetry stands solely by its own worth. It doesn't have to grovel before the
powerful, it has no need to be cowed in the presence of learning. It doesn't
have to keep one eye on the feelings of the rich, it has no need to fear the
hatred of the deprived. It is not to be measured with the yardstick of what is
right, or weighed only on the scales of what is true. It is self-contained and
self-sufficient."

"But
people have to live together, they are doomed to be bound by systems and
culture. There are people who need to be covered and fed."

"The
poet is precisely someone who transcends that. It's only when all that has been
thrown overboard that the true poet is born."

"Then
what does he gain in return?"

"Poetry.
High rank doesn't come, distinctions don't come, wealth isn't won. But
sometimes a single line can replace all three."

"Is
there poetry like that?"

"Yes,
there is. Before those eager to give themselves airs persuaded agitated fools
to accept thedivision of society
into superiors and inferiors, and put a collar on the world with their systems
and laws and manners, all poetry was like that. Before silly, agitated poets
pierced their own noses and handed the bridle to those who like to give
themselves airs."

"You
don't mean Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu? (*) You wouldn't by any chance be invoking a
nonexistent past in order to prove that you're right to look for your own
dream-world in the future?"

"I
do not wish to use the names of the dead. I'm simply relying on my own human
nature. Besides, I'm not talking about the whole world, only about my view of poetry."

He
was then only twenty-four, far too young to accept such views on poetry. He was
only just beginning to deviate from a social structure and its system of values
that had wounded him deeply, so that the emotion dominating his poetry was
still basically centred on the resulting anger and bitterness. The old man's
poetic theories were too much in contradiction with his own professed idea of
poetry as a means to a utilitarian end for him to be able to accept them. In
spite of the awe and the strange affinity he felt with the old man, he slowly
began to rebel again.

"What
are people supposed to do with such poetry, then?"

"Small
uses are always evident, great uses never. A gimlet is made to pierce holes, a
cord is spun to bind things. But there's no easy explanation for why the
Creator produced the Universe. Does that mean that the Universe is
useless?"

The
old man continued to argue forcefully, but from that moment his features began
to change back. Slowly the light that had seemed to be shining from the sound
rosy flesh faded, the facial features that had been like those of a pretty
child began to blur again. He noticed the change at once, but at first only as
a strange feeling without any particular significance. He was too busy
defending with youthful zeal the ideas about poetry he had developed.

"Such
a great use may be no use. Surely, from the smallest creature to the human
being, for each the Universe has various uses, right for one and not for
another. Then there is no such thing as a great use for the whole Universe,
only small uses for each being contained within it."

"There's
a difference between saying that something does not exist, and saying that
things cannot be explained. Perhaps the great use of the Universe is simply the
total sum of all the small uses?"

"Aren't
you making small things so big that in the end they become useless? Make a
needle as big as a pestle, it's no use either as needle or as pestle.
Chuang-tzu made a bird that was too large to live in the world; the Buddha made
goodness so vast that no one knew what to do with it. It seems that you are
turning poetry into something so great that it no longer exists?"

"Poetry
was originally a great thing, it's those corrupt scholars who came after kings
Yao and Shun, after Confucius and Mencius, who have reduced poetry to the small
thing you see today. It's been like this for thousands of years. Once it has
been confined by Goodness, fettered by Manners, tied fast by Righteousness, and
oppressed by Knowledge, how can those who come afterwards discern the original
greatness of poetry? I'm not making small things too big to be useful, I'm
taking things that have been shrunk so small that they're useless and trying to
make them big enough to use as they were originally meant to be used."

The
old man now looked just as he did when he first came into the room, with skin
that seemed to have been soaked in water and faded by the sun, and features
that were indistinct. The voice, too, again sounded hoarse and weak. At last he
began to feel strange at the change, it made his flesh creep.

Perhaps
for that reason, he stopped being rebellious and began to ask questions that
came straight from the heart. Nightfall was making the room dark, the wine was
perhaps affecting his eyesight and preventing him from seeing properly, he may
have received an exaggerated impression of change in a simple face, but he felt
that in that short interval of time he had seen in the old man the kind of
changes that you normally see in a human face over the course of several dozen
years. It suddenly inspired him with a mysterious sense of expectancy for what
the man could say about poetry.

"I
understand. But if poetry is of such great use, those who produce it ought to
receive some great gain. Yet the only thing the poet gains is the poem
itself."

"It's
a matter of seeing the original meaning of all things. The world is full of all
kinds of meanings. But our minds are so fettered by the lies and falsehoods
they make for themselves, that they cannot see the beauty, goodness, or truth
of those meanings. Only a mind that has become free can see such things, and
that seeing is also a making. Because what exists, if no one can see it, might
just as well not exist at all, but if seeing comes, non-being is turned into
utter being. Originally a poem is something seen, and although we don't say we
see a poem but that we make it, that is what is meant."

"In
what way is the body made free in gaining a poem?"

"When
that profoundest state is attained, the body escapes from the captivity of
forms, the prisons of time, and the fetters of space. . ."

At
that point the old man's voice grew even fainter than before. His expectation
too was diminishing. These people who speak needlessly difficult words, distort
clear meanings, and make simple, obvious things complicated and ambiguous!
Suddenly doubts arose in his mind concerning the old man, perhaps because of
his age. Why, his claim that by poetry even the body can be set free of time
and space sounded like the dotage of an old windbag of a poet basking in a Zen
breeze!

"Then
is poetry the Way?" he asked, after a pause, mainly with the intention of
confirming his suspicions about the old man.

The
old man was gasping as he replied, as if to show that he would have no strength
left for any more talking after this.

"So
you too. . .you reckon my ideas
about poetry are just fantoms borrowed from the head of some half-baked monk?
Well, you ask, so I'll tell you. Poetry is not the Way. Like poetry, the Way
sees the original meaning of things, but it sees by putting one thing in place
of another. Whereas poetry sees things without any change in the way they are.
The Way ultimately seeks to transcend this world, while poetry strives to
become one with the world in which it remains.."

With
that he painfully rose to his feet, cutting short any further questioning.

"After
all, it seems that our ideas about poetry are very far apart. I have certainly
met a real poet in you, but not the friend in true poetry I had hoped I might
find, apparently. Still, there's one thing more I want to say. So long as you
hold your present ideas about poetry, you'll never get rid of the anger and
resentment holed up inside you. At best, the petty rewards your poems bring may
help relieve the bitterness for a time, but in the end I'm afraid you'll loose
your poetry completely. . . ."

Several
questions rose in his mind as he heard those words but he could not force him
to stay. Seen from behind as he tottered out of the room, the old man somehow
looked like the stump of an ancient tree shaking in a cold wind.

He
stayed two more days at the inn after that, perhaps because he felt
dissatisfied with the outcome of their discussion. The warning the old man had
added as a parting shot, although it did not strike him as real, had left a far
deeper impression than anything he had said about poetry in general.

During
the next two days he managed to drink with the old man a couple of times; he
waxed eloquent, he prodded, he jabbed, but the fire seemed to have gone out and
he could never get the man to talk about poetry with anything like the first
evening's fervour. Now and again he might reply in a desultory fashion, but
either he could not retain what he had said or it struck him as completely incomprehensible.
He changed his approach and tried to find out something about his earlier life,
but there too the only thing he learned was that the old man was generally
known as the Old Drunkard.

He
became more interested in the Old Drunkard as a man than in his ideas, and
tried to satisfy his curiosity by addressing himself to the woman he lived
with. But she turned out to be not much better informed. Many years before, in
a village several miles further down the mountain, there had been a bad
outbreak of typhoid and her young husband had died, she too was sick; just then
the Old Drunkard had appeared, he had shrouded and buried the husband's corpse,
then nursed her back to life. That had been the start of their relationship. As
soon as she had recovered, he had brought her up here and they had opened the
inn; that had been the beginning of their life together. But they were unlike
any ordinary couple; the Old Drunkard would never let himself be tied down.
This time too, he had only been back a couple of weeks after spending three
years away somewhere.

"I
don't know what he is to me. I suppose we've been together, oh, some twenty
years now, but I don't know him at all, I really don't."

She
smiled faintly as she spoke. It was not the mystifying smirk of someone trying
to hide something.

His
premonition that the old Drunkard might indeed be a real poet came from a
different quarter. Not from what the old man himself said, or from what he
could learn about him from others, but from something he observed by chance
with his own eyes, something almost insignificant.

On
the morning of his third day at the inn, he happened to glimpse the Old
Drunkard as he was walking down a valley not far from the house. It was a
little, nameless valley low on the mountain, the view was utterly beautiful.
The old man was sitting on a small outcrop of rock gazing into a small stream
where bright red and yellow leaves were drifting past. As he followed the
footpath down the valley, he recognized the Old Drunkard and turned towards him.
He was leaving, and he had been feeling sorry because when he had tried to say
goodbye the old man had not been around.

As
he was heading towards him, he happened to glance around at the surrounding
landscape and felt a sudden shock. There was such a perfect harmony between the
apparently dozing man and the natural scenery in which he was set. Generally,
the more beautiful a scene is, the harder it is for a person to find any place
in it. The Old Drunkard might have been just a block of mossy rock or a lovely
pine tree, he matched so perfectly with the water and stones and trees around
him. Indeed, it almost seemed that his presence raised the relatively
unremarkable valley to new heights of beauty.

He
stood there gazing at the old man, then at the scenery around him, not even
daring to breathe. That's the Old Drunkard,he kept reminding himself, staring in his direction. Yet the
man and the details of the scenery vanished and instead his head was full of the
utterly beautiful valley and its harmony.

That
was all. Certainly that moment's emotion deepened the impression left by their
conversation on the first evening; still, it was not enough to make him change
his mind about leaving. He had a lot of debts to pay and repay the world: debts
of glory and humiliation, love and hate, right and wrong. His long-cherished
dream of high office had been replaced by anger and bitterness, but those fires
too could not be put out with a few sweet words. True, the Old Drunkard's ideas
about poetry had from the start exerted a strong fascination on him, but they
could hardly be expected to captivate him completely at that point in his life.
He was still only twenty-four, it was by no means sure that his present
deviation from the norm would offer no possibility of return.

Yet
people generally tend to consider that his encounter with the Old Drunkard
marks the starting-point of his career as a full poet. Rather a hasty
conclusion, perhaps, but not too unreasonable. He left then, and more than
twenty years passed before he met the Old Drunkard again; but from that moment
he had within him a strong inkling that there was a possibility for life to be
full of poetry as such, and a notion that the true poet is one who has
renounced everything.

23.

Not
all non-conformists are poets. But all poets are non-conformists. Some poets
have absolutely none of the usual characteristics of a non-conformist. They are
faithful to the normal order of life, laughing at its joys, weeping at its
sorrows. Yet they too are non-conformists. For if a person is a poet at all, he
is bound to deviate from the norm at least in the use of language. Language can
rise to the heavenly realms of high poetry only when it transcends the muddy
ground of practicality.

If
such acts of deviation are the universal fate and true characteristic of all
poets, then he was at every moment a poet, from the time he left home at the
age of twenty-four. Whatever the Old Drunkard meant for him, and no matter how
great the attraction of the safe normality of daily life, in the end he did not
return to his wife and children, and to the routine life of his time.

There
is a moving story told by an eye-witness of the moment when his act of
deviation was finally decided on. According to this story, on returning from
his first visit to the Diamond Mountains he actually came as close to his home
as its hedge. It was an early winter evening and the first snow-flakes were
beginning to fall, the light shining through the paper windows seemed
exceptionally bright and warm. From inside he could hear three-year-old
Hak-kyun muttering in his sleep, while Ik-kyun was crying, he had just been
beginning to smile when he left, and he heard the occasional sighs of his young
wife. Standing there, he had a vision of becoming a nameless farmer and he was
actually about to push open the brushwood gate to go in, when he hugged himself
and emitted a long moan. Then he shuddered, as if struck by some thought, shook
his head violently, and turned away.

Just
as he was leaving the outskirts of the village, he spat a clot of blood on to
the snow, which was already beginning to pile up white on the ground; the
villagers never knew what sad, lonely creature had left that blood behind.
There is no telling which was the more decisive factor, his failure of nerve
before the bleak daily routine of life which had unfolded before his eyes, or
the Old Drunkard's suggestions which had begun to affect him; whichever it was,
in the end he did not return home.

He
wandered from place to place, never settling. In cold weather and hot, come
rain come snow, he went about in thin clothing, with a bamboo hat on his head
and a bamboo cane in his hand. From the time he first left home until the day
he died, his dress never varied. No one knows from what moment he became known
as a wandering poet, he was all the time writing poems. That too never varied
from the time he first left home until the day he died. Likewise his begging.
For most of the time, from the moment he left home at twenty-four until the day
he died in some small village down in the south-western region of Honam, at the
age of fifty-six, he begged clothing to wear and food to eat from unfamiliar
people in unfamiliar places.

Does
that mean, then, that those remaining thirty-two years were a mere accumulation
of units of time, always with exactly the same colour and meaning? No. Not at
all. Although his attire did not change until the day he died, the soul they
wrapped was not always exactly the same. Likewise, he invariably wrote poems,
but their meanings varied according to the time they were written, and though
in his deviation he moved endlessly through the world's peripheries, the eyes
with which he viewed the world varied with time. In other words, his life can
be divided into several distinct stages.

Certainly,
there are many possible ways of dividing his life into different stages, and as
many possible disputes as to which is right or wrong. Some may try to divide
his life according to the different geographical areas he visited, others may
draw lines at thirty and forty and divide his life according to the decades,
while yet others may attempt to make a classification by reference to the
various social events of the time. But he was undeniably a poet. Seeing that
poetry-writing was the most vital activity for him, it may well be that a
division of his life according to the kinds of poetry he wrote will prove to be
not too far wrong.

24.

If
the different stages of his life are divided according to the characteristics
of his poetry, the first stage will cover the seven or eight years between the
age of about twenty-five, when his wandering really began, and the visit he
made to Dabok Village when he was thirty-two. During this period he chiefly
moved around such places as Tongchon, Hamhung, Hongwon and Tanchon in Hamkyong
Province as well as neighbouring parts of Pyongan Province; regional
characteristics seem, however, to have exercised no great influence on his
poetry.

The
main formal characteristic of his poetry at this time is the classical new form
based on the solid rhetoric of the poems written for the government service
examinations. Some say that the main pleasure obtained in reading his poems
comes from the skill with which he deviated from the norms of classical style,
but that is more a hall-mark of the poems written later.

He
showed no special preference regarding subject matter. He liked to display
vigourous, intense emotions and avoided writing on topics that were easily
prone to sentimentality or frivolous malice.

The
techniques he enjoyed using at this time give prime place to pomp and opulence,
not unrelated to the rhetoric of the government service examination style, on
which his poetic craft was based. Wit and humour may also be characteristics of
his poetry at this time, but what distinguishes this from later periods is the
effort he still makes to maintain his dignity as a high-class intellectual.

In
the background to these features is his nomadic life in those years. He had
become a wanderer but he had not been on the road very long, so naturally for a
while he had mainly to rely on the patronage of a few old acquaintances. When
he went to visit them, nine times out of ten they turned out to be heads of
local government sent down from Seoul, or the sons of local landed gentry he
had got to know during his time in the capital.

Cho
Un-kyong, the magistrate of Anbyon County who took such good care of him, is a
good example. He had come to know Cho vaguely when he was once staying as a
guest of Shin Sok-Woo; now he made him welcome when he came to visit him.
Thanks to the kindness of such people he did not suffer from poverty in the
early stages of his nomadic life, and he was able to maintain his former
sentiments more or less unscathed.

A
second thing that may underlie the characteristics of the poems of this period
is the class of the consumers for whom the poems were destined. As we saw above
in considering the shape taken by his wandering, he chiefly frequented the
rural upper classes or people close to this class, such as kisaeng
girls, and these formed the main consumers of his poems. Invariably what they
liked was the culture of the capital city with its formal clichés; the popular
style of poetry that he produced later could not have found congenial ground
among them.

The
process by which he mastered the poetic craft and also his youth offer other
background factors that underlie the characteristics of the poems of this first
period. These were precisely the kinds of poetry that he had previously
mastered, while his aesthetic sense, which had not yet fully developed, to some
extent made him readily content with merely conventional forms of expression
and techniques. At the same time in his youthful pride he tried to conceal his
true state of beggardom under a cloak of bluff and bluster, which was also not
unrelated to the characteristics of his poetry at the time.

Above
all, one feature that cannot be omitted from this list of background factors is
the weakness of his social consciousness. The bitter frustrations that he had
tasted had made him so politically indifferent that he almost intentionally
turned his eyes away from the political reality and social situations of his
time, and clung instead to his own inner world. As a result, his poems
naturally sought their themes in Nature and in subjective emotions, for which
the most effective form of expression was bound to be magnificently opulent
ornamentation and exaggerated emotion.

It
would perhaps be meaningful at this point to look at two poems that exemplify relatively
well the main characteristics of this period.

Hermits'
ways are distant as clouds;

At
nightfall a traveller's thoughts grow darker.

Changed
to a crane, the hermit flies off, no knowing where.

News
from Pongnae Mountain is faint in my dreams.

A
kisaeng in my young embrace, a fortune seems like straw;

With
a jar of wine in daylight, everything's like clouds.

Wild
geese flying on high follow a river's course;

Butterflies
passing green hills cannot shun the flowers.

Both
poems are written in seven-character lines, the first is entitled "Pyoyon
Pavillion in Anbyon" and the second "On shunning flowers." The
first was written for Cho Un-kyong, who was the magistrate for Anbyon County;
the second was composed together with a kisaeng girl in Tanchon, the two
of them composing alternate lines. Both feel like poems written by some
vigorous man of taste, betraying no trace of a vagabond's weariness.

The
success he scored with this kind of poetry in the first few years was a
surprise even to himself. In the reception-rooms of the landed gentry, local
magistrates and dignitaries, or very occasionally in the room of a culturally
vain kisaeng, his youth was consumed in a final blaze of poetry and
wine.

Sometimes
he comforted their sense of inferiority with regard to the culture of the
capital, sometimes he frankly prostituted his talents to their low cultural
tastes, while he spent those few years intoxicated by the cheap admiration and
applause he received from such great luminaries, forgetting for a time his own
resentment and bitterness.

25.

But
time flows on and everything changes. No flower stays fresh a hundred days, no
guest is welcome for more than ten days; likewise changes took place in his
life. He had for a time preserved his dignity by constantly moving from one
acquaintance to another, but his status as a house-guest began to decline as he
was forced to have recourse to the hospitality of the same persons for a second
or third time. When people began to realize that this was no distinguished man
of talent honouring them just once with a visit, but a mere vagabond who kept
coming back again, their admiration for his poems diminished rapidly, their
material rewards grew accordingly mean. By the time he passed thirty his life
had come to resemble that of a typical vagrant of his times, always on the move
and living from what he could beg.

His
love affairs with kisaeng girls with names like Hongryon or Karyon
seemed more glamorous than they really were but they always came to an unhappy
end. What with the financial patronage of local magistrates and the rich landed
gentry, to say nothing of poetry and songs, he had the impression that now at
last his lonely wasted youth was being fully compensated for, yet his love
affairs were always doomed to fail. There might be exceptions but essentially kisaengs
were a class who sold sex in exchange for financial reward, which meant that he
could never become a serious long-term client of such women. Most of them only
kept company with him while his patrons provided financial payments on his
behalf, and although one might occasionally give herself to him moved by a kind
of cultural vanity, that never lasted.

He
for his part did not intend to settle for long in the embraces of any such
girls. Yet he could not help feeling desolate when he saw their gates slam
cruelly in his face while his affection was not yet over and before the
pleasure had abated. He thought he had loved and been loved, but once it was
over, the relationship always turned out to have been nothing more than a
variety of prostitution while at times, because poetry had been involved it
provoked, beyond simple wretchedness, an unbearable sense of disgust.

With
age a change occurred in his sentiments. As he entered his thirties he realized
that he must give up for ever all thought of being readmitted to the upper
circles of society; at once he began to be invaded with scepticism concerning
the youthful days he had spent intoxicated with wine and cheap applause. He
dreaded the thought of growing old as a cheapskate poet no different from a
clown; the lonely wearisome road stretching ineluctably before him now began to
look very long indeed.

At
last his social consciousness, long imprisoned within the iron walls of his
political indifference, began litle by little to open its eyes to the outside
world. As he became more and more tired of his wandering life, his contacts
with the common people grew more numerous, forcing him to feel the tragic
nature of that primal life which he had tried for so long to ignore. The fact
that he finally decided to take his place as one of them was no mere hypothesis
designed to exaggerate his resentment and bitterness, but rather a clearly
formulated anticipation; their life was the prototype of the life he too had to
experience. As a result he could not help becoming aware of the many social
variables that regulated their lives.

With
that came changes in his poetry as well. Irregularities and variations were
attempted, themes and technique too slowly began to diverge from what they had
previously been. After five or six years of always writing the same kind of
poems, he grew bored with pursuing preposterous, abstract sentiments far
removed from the realities of life.

He
was equally tired of the high class establishment, enslaved in their highbrow
cultural tastes, and of the newly rising classes who mistook the acquisition of
such a culture for the last step in their own social ascension; he no longer
even experienced his former enthusiasm for composing poems in tandem with kisaeng
girls, which had really been nothing more than a kind of tacky foreplay to sex.
He grew disgusted with the way he served to justify the rich life enjoyed by
the landed gentry and endorse their ease, by staying in their guest-rooms, and
began to feel physically sick at the wearisome contact with rural intellectuals
who regarded him as a model of high culture, desperately striving as they were
to console their own blighted talents.

What
most decisively marked the end of the first phase was not so much these inner
changes as the visit he made to Pyongan Province at the very end of the period.
He was now thirty-one, and as far as Hamkyong Province was concerned begging
seemed the only course open to him, since there was no house left where he was
welcome, so he crossed over into Pyongan Province, where a fresh shock awaited
him, with the local people's evaluation of Hong Kyong-rae's Insurrection.

The
reports he had previously heard about Hong Kyong-rae's revolt said that it had
been begun by north-westerners and had been quelled by north-westerners.
Undoubtedly, for what had finally vanquished the might of the huge northern
division of the rebel army had been a force made up of volunteers and
reservists from the northern region of Pyongan Province, including Uiju, while
the southern division had been halted by a confederation of officials and local
troops from the region around Anju. The government troops dispatched from the
capital had only rooted out, with great difficulty, the rebel forces that had
been driven into Chongju Castle. They had only succeeded after several months
of incredibly hard fighting, despite their comparative superiority in numbers.

He
had naturally assumed that the North-westerners' verdict on Hong Kyong-rae
would be the same as that of the court, but it was not. Perhaps because the
people he met from the start of his travels through Pyongan Province were from
the lower classes, unlike in Hamkyong, he found that for them Hong Kyong-rae
was no villain, even if they called him a traitor. They used the word
"rebellion" to designate what Hong Kyong-rae had done, but looked as
though they only said that because they were obliged to, and when they spoke of
the new world he had tried to establish they went so far as to betray signs of
secret regret. It was bound to come as a shock to him, for he had always
believed that treason was invariably an evil, criminal act.

Not
that the people there praised or admired Hong Kyong-rae openly, but they never
blamed or abused him either. When people recalled how parents or brothers had
been killed before their very eyes they might shed tears of sorrow, but very
few ever laid the blame on Hong Kyong-rae, and if they spoke of their wartime
sufferings they gave first place to the plundering and brutality of the
government troops, rather than the conscriptions and requisitions by Hong's
side. All these things were equally a shock to him, for he had long nurtured
deep resentment, not simply against his grandfather but even more against Hong
Kyong-rae, to whom he had transferred all his grandfather's guilt.

The
longer he stayed in Pyongan Province, the deeper the shock became, until in the
end he became highly sceptical about the existing verdict on his grandfather
that he had hitherto accepted unreservedly. If Hong Kyong-rae could be regarded
in such a light, it was quite possible to have a different view of his
grandfather as well. If that were the case, there might be a way of healing one
of the ugliest and cruellest of his wounds, his resentment and bitterness might
be elevated from grief over his miserable fate to a feeling of true pride, even
if that made no real difference in his life.

So,
one year after entering Pyongan Province he went to visit Dabok Village, where
Hong Kyong-rae's Insurrection had had its base; that day was destined to be the
last day of the first phase of his life as a poet.

26.

It
was early in the summer of the year in which he turned thirty-two that he went
to visit Dabok Village.

It
had been put under government surveillance and declared a prohibited area for
several years after the Hong Kyong-rae Insurrection had been quelled. Twenty or
more years had passed and the surveillance had long since been lifted but
people still did not like to go near the place. There were widespread rumours
in the neighbouring villages that even in broad daylight you could hear the
crying of the restless spirits of those who had been wrongly klled, while at
night will-o'-the wisps bright as bonfire flames went leaping here and there.

He
too could not enter the village in a sober state of mind, but for a quite
different reason than those local people. The thought of going to the very
heart of the highly controversial insurrection, as a result of which his
grandfather had been beheaded by an executioner's sword, his young father had
died coughing blood, while his fate with that of his entire family had fallen
from the clouds to the dust in a flash, meant that he could not enter the
village in a normal state. He went to a nearby inn and drank from midday
onward, spending all the money he had in his purse. He only topped the rise and
walked into the valley of Dabok Village as the sun was setting in the west. He
had originally planned to visit the village first, then go on as far as
Brushwood Island, on the other side of the river, which the rebel forces had
used as their headquarters.

By
then the shock Noh Jin had given him had become a painful but valuable memory
and his emotional reaction as he entered the valley was simply a vague sense of
sadness. Though the other crimes that Kim Chwa-kun had once told him of still
rankled deep in his heart, now blood-relationship had filled him with tender
affection, and he felt no pain strong enough to cause resentment or hatred.

He
climbed the old path up the valley, which looked rougher than it really was on
account of the tears welling in his eyes. Perhaps because of all those
thoughts, he seemed to hear the cries of the innumerable spirits of the
innocent dead ringing in his ears, though the sun was still a hand's breadth
above the horizon. Strangely enough, that made his feeling of sorrow grow
stronger but without any sense of fear or disgust.

There
was nothing left standing in the valley. The fact that the place had once
served as the base for a great insurrection could only be conjectured from its
particular topography, which made it easy to defend against enemy observation
and attack, while a large number of soldiers could drill in the hollow area it
enclosed. There was no trace of the gold mine that Yi Hi-jo had set up as a
decoy to attract people, nor of the huts that had sheltered the rebels
disguised as gold diggers. Here and there, small mounds covered with grass
seemed to mark the site of the huts that had been burned to the ground, that
was all.

The
sight of Dabock Valley provoked a sense of evanescence that increased his
sorrow and as he crouched on one of the grass-covered mounds, that had probably
once been a hut sheltering the rebels, he began to cry. As the tears welled up,
his sorrow became more intense and he wept loudly.

He
wept. He wept for his grandfather's misfortune; he wept for Hong Kyong-rae's
vain dreams and for all those pitiful souls who had followed him and died. He
wept too as he looked back over his own bitter life, he wept thinking of the
lonely, desolate years still lying ahead of him, for how long he could not
tell.

He
did not know how long he had been crying for. Suddenly somebody behind him
asked:

"Who
are you? What are you crying so bitterly for?"

Wiping
away the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, he turned and found a
middle-aged man standing there, his shadow stretching long in the setting sun.

He
looked sinister, with a long scar cutting across his face from the forehead to
the top of the upper lip, while the top of his left sleeve fluttered empty in
the wind, the lower half having been torn off below the elbow. Yet he felt that
this was no ordinary man, in spite of the eerie feeling he inspired.

"Who
are you? Why are you crying there?"

As
he found it impossible to stop crying immediately, he could not answer and the
middle-aged man repeated his question. He did not seem to have asked just in
passing. He hesitated for a little while, then decided to answer his question,
taking a hint from the sight of his scar.

"I'm
merely a traveller passing by. I was crying at the thought of Marshall Hong's
wasted dreams, and grieving for the people who died following him."

A
strange expression, difficult to interpret, appeared on the man's face. His two
eyes sparkled and the long scar on his face, apparently the result of a
slashing knife, twitched, but it was hard to tell whether out of anger or
satisfaction.

"No,
you're no mere traveller just happening to be passing by this area. Nobody
dressed in a scholar's costume would ever come all the way here and weep as you
did. Speak truthfully. Who are you?"

It
was equally difficult to tell from the authority with which he spoke which side
he was on. That authority was of such proportions that it aroused an
instinctive caution in him and made him hesitate.

"Don't
worry. I was the great Marshall's man myself. Even if you are a government
agent, I'm not afraid. If you are not, then tell the truth."

The
middle-aged man urged him to answer, making his voice a degree gentler as if he
guessed why he was hesitating. He was not sure if it was the effect of the year
he had already spent in Pyongan Province, or because he had been secretly
hoping to meet such a person, but he felt no fear when the man revealed that he
had been one of the Marshall's men, in fact he was glad.

He
had long been anxious to find out the hidden sides of Hong Kyong-rae's life,
and now his curiosity had been inflamed by all he had drunk. Hoping that he
might at last learn the things he longed to know, he told who he was without
further hesitation.

"I
am called Kim Pyong-yon. The former magistrate of Sunchon, by the name of
Ik-sun, was my late grandfather."

A
look of utter astonishment appeared on the man's face. His eyes gaped wide for
a while and he could not close his mouth; then he drew closer and touched his
shoulder with his one remaining hand.

"You
mean. . . you're the actual grandson of his excellency our magistrate? Can it
be true?"

He
felt a strange thrill at the man's exclamation. He had never met anyone who
spoke of his grandfather in such tones and with such an expression. While he
tried to wipe away the tears that had suddenly started to flow again, he asked:

"Did
you know my grandfather, then?"

"I
did. I think I knew him best among our people. From the day he was pulled out
of bed half-dressed and forced to surrender the government seal to our deputy
marshall, Kim Sa-yong, until he was taken away with the last batch of
prisoners. But what about you? Did you know him?"

He
felt a vague affection towards him echoing in the voice as the man adopted the
familiar tones of an older man addressing his junior. He was still not sure
what he ought to say, so he replied, as if to test him,

"Yes,
I know about him."

"You
mean to say, you know him as a shameful ancestor who betrayed the King and
surrendered to rebels; who was beheaded as a traitor and his body
quartered?"

The
middle-aged man acted as if he were interrogating him, staring into his face
with burning eyes. There was such a strong tone of denial in his question that
he could not answer immediately. He looked at the man in confusion.

"Then.
. . is there more I should know?"

He
asked this cautiously, after a pause. It was a question to which he expected
the reply to be a great roar, but the middle-aged man's reaction was
unexpected. He looked at him in silence, then suddenly teardrops began to well
out.

"There
are many things you are eager to learn. Let's go to my house. You'll be needing
a place to spend the night anyway, and I've got things to tell you."

Saying
this, the man began tugging at the collar of his coat. The sun had gone down in
the meantime, the dusk was deepening.

His
house was about four miles away, a hut standing isolated at the edge of a
village. He did not seem to have a wife or children, for a while he busied
himself steaming some potatoes and going to fetch some rice wine and edibles
from the village inn.

They
ate the steamed potatoes for supper, and drank a few bowls of wine while the
man asked various questions about his life. Then, as the moon rose in the early
evening sky, the man began to talk about himself.

"My
name is Won Myong-dae. We are natives of Sonchon, we've lived there for
generations. My father was a clerk in the magistrate's office and my elder
brother the head of the staff of officers, but they are both dead now. I myself
had the ambition of making a career on the military side, and trained in
martial arts. It was the only choice open to people like us because, as you
know, we here in the north-western region are not given any chance to rise in
the civilian administration. In the end it was not the government but Marshall
Hong who called me and gave me a job to do. I came to Dabok Village in the
summer of the year I was eighteen, while my father and brother agreed to remain
in Sonchon and collaborate with us. In the twelfth month of that year I went
back to Sonchon in General Kim Sa-yong's Northern Army as his standard-bearer.
Later I was sent to fight in the battle of Sasongya under the field-commander,
until I became like this, and that's how I came to know your grandfather."

"What
happened to my grandfather?"

He
put down his wine bowl and asked with bated breath. Though he could not
remember his grandfather's face, the pull of the blood-tie uniting them could
not be suppressed. Won Myong-dae quietly shut his eyes and began to reminisce.

"Thinking
back now, that day our rebel forces attacked the magistrate's office in Sonchon
is still so vivid in my mind's eye. That day your father had somehow got wind
that Park Song-shin, the military commander at Kwaksan, was conspiring with us,
so he arrested him and was planning to send him back to Kwaksan under escort.
But our deputy marshall, Kim Sa-ong, rescued General Park along the way, then
launched an attack on the magistrate's office at Sonchon and took your
grandfather prisoner. When your grandfather surrendered, he must simply have
been hoping to save his life. The reason why he did what we told him to do
while he was under arrest for a few days on charges of corruption and exaction,
was no doubt for the same reason. However, it was different after that. He
decided to help us of his own free will, as he told us when he took up our
cause and was given an official position in our camp. In those few days he had
seen a new heavens and a new earth. The love and solidarity he found among our
rebel forces must have been moving for someone like him, who had been brought
up in the rich ambiance of a high and mighty family, and who had known nothing
but a steady rise in his public career. When we comforted the fear-stricken
population and fed them with grain from the government storehouses, he said
that now he realized what a government official ought to do. He said he was
distressed to have treated the common folk like horses and cattle, while he
merely advocated love for the people, help for the people, as things buried in
outdated texts written by dead men, without knowing the truth of what it was to
be born in bondage, not knowing what the resentment and bitterness of the
common people really were."

"And
did he really write that declaration?"

"Declaration?
You mean that text he lent to us? Of course, it was written from the very
depths of his heart. It was a fine piece of writing, designed to calm the
so-called scholars who were even more agitated at any mention of rebellion than
the ignorant common people were and to persuade them to join with us in our
righteous cause. Only think. Would it have been a normal thing to give a high
position to a former magistrate within a few days of his surrender, even if
there had not been many qualified people among us rebels? It was a measure of
the truthfulness of his sympathy with our cause, and the value of his
assistance."

Won
Myong-dae's voice was trembling with excitement, while he was feeling more
troubled than moved. How was he to understand his grandfather's turning away
from them again later?

"Why
then did he cut off the head of that staff officer, Kim Chang-si? Why did he
surrender a second time to the government troops?"

"Before
I tell you about that, I must first tell you how I came to survive as I did. I
was in Sunchon for a fortnight before I went off to Kwaksan in General Yi
Je-cho's battalion. I got wounded like this in the Sasongya Battle in the early
days of the first month of the new year. Luckily, my brother happened to be a
platoon-leader in the same battle so that I managed to escape being left lying
a corpse. I carry in me a strong sense of remorse for not having died alongside
the Great Marshall and the other comrades in Chongju Castle. By the time I had
recovered somewhat, hidden in a cave in the hill behind my old house, and could
just about move around again, it was already the second month of the year and
the castle was under heavy siege. Hence I was not able to see or hear at
firsthand what your grandfather did. But that wretch Kim Chang-si deserved to
die. As a staff officer of our army, he should have entered Chongju Castle; but
when things turned against us, he sneaked away. We were fools to have been
taken in by his smooth words. I don't know what to say about your grandfather's
surrender to the government troops. But I can't forget what he said to me as he
held my hand, the last time we met. It's still clear in my memory. It think it
must have been the fourteenth day of the first month, because it was the day
before I was moved up to the cave. Until then I had been receiving the medical
care I needed while staying in the house and he actually came to see me at
home. He held my hand, which was burning with fever, and said,

"Myong-dae
you have dedicated your life to a righteous cause, do not torment yourself. If
I have an opportunity later to write a chronicle of this revolution, I will
remember your name first of all."

"Of
course, his surrender can be seen as just one more defection as the situation
grew worse and worse, but I do not think it was. He was doomed to die. The
court needed a scapegoat for later generations and he fitted the role
perfectly. We caught the heads of three of the towns we took, Kwaksan, Sunchon,
and Kasan. Chong Si, the magistrate of Kasan, was killed resisting us; Yi
Yong-sik, the magistrate of Kwaksan, managed to escape and performed services
for the government troops in their counter-offensive. Your grandfather was the
one who had to die as an example, that ugliest and most shameful of examples,
execution. I think that they made him die in disgrace because he had
surrendered to save his skin, playing that petty trick with the head of Kim
Chang-si rather than die nobly. I reached that conclusion when I saw how the
sly and greedy Chong Si was being elevated to the status of an exemplary loyal
subject. Yet he was reputedly so corrupt that they said he had stolen land all
over Kasan. He was a deadly enemy of our commander, Yi Hi-jo, because he had
robbed him of his wife and his property. In a situation like that, how could he
dream of saving his life if ever he was taken prisoner by Yi Hi-jo's troops? So
of course he put up a desperate fight, since he was doomed to die in any case,
and then they called it fidelity and loyalty. The world being what it is, what
crimes wouldn't they invent to accuse your grandfather of?"

His
eyes had dried as he listened but now tears began to flow again. A poem of many
years before came to his mind, a poem calling his grandfather a criminal not
fit to enter heaven and Chong Si a loyal subject on a par with Yue Fei, and his
heart began to ache. But more than that he was overwhelmed with joy, as his
sense of original sin was lifted. He felt he had entered a completely new
world, as he asked:

"What
was the nature of the justice which Marshall Hong advocated and the young men
of the Northwest found under his banner?"

"What
we dreamed of was a land without discrimination. No discrimination in
land-holding; no discrimination according to the social rank of a person's
parents; no discrimination based on a person's occupation; no discrimination
depending on the size of a person's wealth. What have four hundred years of
corrupt rulers done for our people? What but pillage, oppress, beat, imprison
and kill? How could they so cruelly stamp on the modest hopes of the common
folk on that way?We tried to give
them new hope. We tried to show them a new world."

"But
why did you have to make up those stories of a saint being born or that a
hundred thousand cavalrymen were on their way from China?"

He
was thinking of a declaration which Hong Kyong-rae's rebel forces were supposed
to have distributed. If they were fighting for such great and glorious justice,
why did they not reveal their leader's true identity but use ambiguous titles,
calling him a saint, and even a god? Why pretend they had the backing of
non-existent foreign troops? But Won Myong-dae's reaction was proud and
dignified.

"It
was Kim Chang-si's idea, to which our Marshall agreed; it was designed to draw
in the simple people. There was no other way. In warfare such tricks can be
employed, surely?

"It
was never widely known, but if once the revolution had succeeded, we even dreamed
of a kind of republic in which there would be no king and the state would be
run instead by ministers, after the model of the ancient Zhou Era. We planned
to abolish the social distinctions dividing people and redistribute the land
equally, so that we could construct a natural state here."

This
was something he had never heard before. A republic, with no king, land equally
distributed. . . it was frightening to hear, but at the same time it made his
heart race for joy. Suddenly Won Myong-dae's voice rose in indignant tones.

"And
how did they treat us? Never mind about the other places. Just take the example
of Chongju Castle. When the castle fell, it is said that there were three
thousand civilians and soldiers inside. The government troops let the women go,
and children under the age of nine. Then they cut off two thousand heads in the
space of one day. Even people who had offered no resistance were slaughtered
like cattle or swine. Just think of it. How can you call them fatherland or
government troops? How can you call them king and father? And they have gone on
persecuting people like you for nearly thirty years."

That
was enough. His grandfather might have seemed a traitor in the eyes of the
corrupt regime, but for the poor commoners he had been a far-sighted leader,
and that was enough to make the way ahead seem suddenly bright. The two
emotional pillars that had sustained him for so long, resentment and
bitterness, were no mere matter of idle complaints and grumbling, they were
something he could bear with pride, part of the righteous cause for a better
world. He might not be able to sing his song aloud, it might have to remain for
ever hidden in his heart, what did that matter?

He
shed tears of joy for a while, then suddenly knelt before Won Myong-dae in a
deep prosternation.

"You
have told me things of great value, brother. I have the feeling that the
resentment I have been harbouring has somehow vanished, although it was almost
as high as the heavens. Let's go back to Dabok Village and weep aloud all night
long, the two of us as brothers."

That
moment marks the start of the second phase of his poetic career.

27.

Among
the titles that later generations gave him is that of "the people's
poet." It may not represent fully all the characteristics of his poetry
but it is a good enough designation for one particular period of his poetic
career, namely the second phase, mainly spent wandering around in the Kwanso
area after his visit to Dabok Village.

During
this period he lived as a real wanderer, having given up living on the
hospitality of local magistrates or provincial patrons whom he had come to know
through various acquaintances. Occasionally, when his path led to them, he
might still rely on the rural gentry, but now the circle of his contacts was
more often than not the commoners' class.

This
change in his way of living was largely due to the change in his sentiments.
The righteousness of Hong Kyong-rae's cause, which Won Myong-dae had proved to
him, had freed him of his former sense of original sin, and that turned his
repressed and twisted sense of grievance into something agressive. His
grandfather, who might have been a traitor for the law and the system but was
now established as a righteous man in the eyes of truth, transformed the
bitterness, deriving from the alienations he had suffered simply because he was
his grandfather's grandson, into a right in his own consciousness. From that
time onward, he revealed without hesitation that he was the grandson of Kim
Ik-sun.

Though
he might not be able to reveal the reasons to the world, he believed that he
had the right to bear a grudge against it, the right to rebuke and abuse, the
right to ridicule and to jeer. THen, naturally, that belief moved him away from
the side of the corrupt ruling class and their auxiliaries who had so oppressed
him, towards the class of those alienated as he was.

Accordingly
his poetry also changed. He regarded the forms of his art as part of the
system, and therefore attempted daring solecisms and variations on them. He
began to disregard entirely the basic rules and metrics of poetry which his
time demanded he should observe, sometimes even rejecting the exclusive use of
Chinese characters in his compositions and introducing words written in the
vernacular alphabet known as onmun.

Green
pines sparsely stand.

People
everywhere exist.

The
so-called tottering traveller

a
life long sweet or sour drinks.

Such seven-syllable poems that he wrote in these years,
using a mixture of Chinese characters and native letters, have been seen by
some scholars as a bridge between the Chinese character poems of the later
Choson Dynasty and the songs and new-style poems of the Enlightenment Era. In
the eyes of the time, however, they were a great act of solecism, as he wrote:

I
write mixing onmun letters with Chinese characters,

Like
it or lump it, I don't give a damn!

One can detect in his vehemence, beyond any mere
non-conformist caprice, a clear intent to challenge conventions. Even tones and
rhyme, the importance of which in the poetry of the period was next to life
itself, were not left untouched in his onslaught.

__ the sickle tied at your waist.

__ the ring in the ox's nose.

__ the body you go home and wash,

else
-- is the end, a dot and you're dead.

In poems such as this five-character quatrain, Chinese
characters are partly replaced by vernacular letters that yield the patterns of
tone and rhyme; in the following poem, that he is supposed to have addressed in
anger to an inhospitable monk, he mixes the two systems, using the same final
sound in each line:

All
the pillars are red indeed.

The
traveller at sunset is hungry indeed.

This
temple's welcome is grim indeed.

The
place for you is hell indeed.

To this period belong most of his unconventional poems,
those in which he plays with homonyms and double meanings, or writes Chinese
characters with sounds which mean something quite different in the vernacular.

Along
with the changes in form, the contents of his poems changed too, in contrast to
those of the first stage. In subject matter, he now avoided abstract and
preposterous topics, the exaggerated expression of private feeling, for
example, or the beauty of nature, or supernatural mountain hermits. Instead, he
brought into his poems the tyrannical governors who topped the social scale,
then continued on down through the levels of the wicked nobility, parsimonious
landowners, bogus scholars, untrustworthy geomancers, and ignorant
school-masters; all in turn became objects of poetic attack, lashed by the
malice of his words as his resentment and bitterness took on new forms.

Above
the Governor's office swarm hordes of bandits.

Below
the People's Pleasure Pavillion fall people's tears.

In
Hamkyong Province all flee in shock;

Cho
Ki-yong's family fortunes will not last long!

This satire against Cho Ki-yong, the governor-general of
Hamkyong Province, dexterously mixes various homonyms, using different Chinese
characters in the two halves of each line. Characters with identical sounds can
mean "the Governor's office" and "hordes of bandits,"
"The People's Pleasure Pavillion" and "people's tears,"
"Hamkyong Province" and "flee in shock," while the name of
the Governor-general is the same as a term describing things that will not last
long. The tone of the satire is remarkably severe.

A nobleman's brat with a wide high hat smokes a
long-stemmed pipe

As he pretends to read a newly-bought book of Mencius's
works;

He sounds like a monkey newly born by daylight

Or a frog roughly croaking in a twilight pond.

Geomancers
are all fakes.

Tongues
wagging, busily pointing out North and South.

If
there's really a propitious site in those hills,

Why
did you not bury your own father there?

These two poems mock the son of a rich nobleman and a
geomancer, but they still observe the basic rules of poetry. Malice, however,
expands easily and is difficult to contract, so that in his later poems as time
went on such people become the objects of vicious ridicule. When certain
Chinese words are spoken aloud they become the homophones of native Korean
words; in this way the Chinese word for village school sounds like the Korean
for "my prick," the scholar in his room is "a dog's dick,"
students become "mother-fuckers" and their teacher "my
balls." In the same vein he makes a monk's head into "a horse's
sweaty dick" and a scholar's topknot "the dangling dick of a
squatting dog."

As
changes occurred in the forms and themes, his expressive methods also changed.
In place of rich and flowery rhetoric and a broad, leisurely development of
emotions, wit and intelligence, novelty and originality become his main
technical goals. The unconventional measures in the forms mentioned previously
may have been provoked by the same pursuit.

As
his poems changed, the class of his comsumers also changed. The upper class
patrons of the last six or seven years turned their backs on him in anger or
displeasure, and instead the lower class multitude drew round him with their
noisy applause. They might be deemed insignificant by the central government,
they nevertheless appreciated his sharp satire and mockery of those who acted
as their petty oppressors and exploiters; indeed, for a society as closed at
that of the later Choson Dynasty, he sometimes played the role of a severe
critic. Moreover, his relationship as Kim Ik-sun's grandson helped arouse a
favourable inclination among the lower class people of the Kwanso region. For
as was seen earlier, deep in their hearts they still retained a feeling of
compassion for Hong Kyong-rae and that feeling extended to him by way of his
grandfather.

The
intoxication resulting from the plaudits of the multitude was tremendous.
Previously, his name had been unknown outside of the guest-rooms of the landed
gentry of Hamkyong Province; but now it spread in the space of a couple of
years into every town and even the remote mountain villages of Pyongan
Province. He no longer had to display his talents first before begging for food
and shelter. As soon as they saw his bamboo hat, people welcomed him warmly
into their houses and shared with him their vegetable gruel and weak rice wine.
Yet there was no comparison between the intoxication those gave and the rich
food or strong drink he had known previously.

With
this, a powerful elevation effect took place between the applause of the
populace and his sense of intoxication. In order to maintain the level of
acclaim he was receiving, he set about intensifying his malice against society
and increasing the unconventionality of his poems. Instead of the overall
structure of a poem, he gave first priority to introducing novelties in the use
of individual words and phrases. It was not so much that he was a frivolous man
by nature, but the intoxication caused by the cheers of the multitude was too
powerful. And they did not disappoint him. Whereas the learned and wealthy had
pretended to know better and had been stingy in their praises, the ordinary
people were generous in the expression of their emotions, while that acted on
him as a new demand. Such was the process by which his poetry acquired its
popular quality.

Some
people question the authenticity of his popular identity, on the grounds that
in his critiques there is no hint of any concern for structural matters, be it
the monarchy as such, or the role of powerful families in politics, or the
disorders in land-administration, food-supplies and military affairs; indeed,
his satire and mockery were often directed against people who had themselves
barely escaped becoming victims of the system, or those who were close to it.
It is certainly true that among the poems of this period, there are many
satirical works that may be suspected of being inspired by private feelings
rather than by any objective critical consciousness.

However,
an expression like "structural approach" may have a powerful appeal
in a pretentious age like today, but not even the first pale shoots of it had
begun to appear in his lifetime. Even for the most radically critical minds
among the country's leading rich and powerful families, if something was wrong
it was always seen as merely the fault of some individual, ranging from the
benighted king at the top, right on down to the rapacious clerks in local
magistrates' offices at the lowest level; they were incapable of harbouring any
doubts about the monarchy as such, or the system of government by three
premiers and six minsters. Naturally this only ended in his mocking and making
fun of the petty malice or the follies of the class of people he met as he
moved through the remote country villages; yet, as mentioned earlier, even that
could prove effective as a serious form of social criticism.

It
would be possible to criticize his ability and determination to act. If he
really had a popular spirit, how was it he did nothing but sit tight with his
back to the people and twist words around?

Even
if he himself could not act, might he not have stirred up the people and
incited them to resist? But perhaps even that is an absurd question, in view of
the times he lived through and the spirit of the age. In a word, it was not yet
an age of action, the time was not ripe for the people's sense of resistance to
be set ablaze by an esthetic critical spirit. It was more than half a century
later that the Tonghak Movement (*) rose like a giant maelstrom, but even then
what provoked the people to action was no esthetic critical spirit but a dark
force in religious form.

If
there is anything at all to be objected to in his popular spirit in that
period, it would be that his popular qualities had led him to surrender too
deeply to an undiscriminating populism. This is largely to be blamed on the
times he lived in, but he was so unable to distinguish between popular spirit
and popularity that together with the applause he accepted indiscriminately all
kinds of pressing demands coming from the masses, without any filtering. As a
result, although the themes of his poetry grew more varied, now including songs
about passionate love and worldly affairs, in the end his poetry could not
avoid losing its quality as it was fatally drawn towards popular taste by the
force of that intense affinity.

The
man sucks up there,

The
girl down there.

Up
and down may differ,

The
taste is the same.

Quoting as his work such a poem, which seems to have
been composed during this period, is enough to make one blush.

28.

The
world did not accept him like that for long, however. The poets of lower class
origin became jealous of his popularity and first began to attack him. They did
not spare him, exposing his every possible weakness, ranging from the liasons
with women, which started as soon as he established contact with lower class
people, to his excessively destructive approach to poetic form.

His
sexual extravagance at this time was sufficiently immoderate to become the
subject of gossip among later generations. Deeply hurt by the falsity and
emptiness of the ink-smeared love found in the chambers of kisaeng
girls, he turned to the dust-covered, sweaty-smelling women of the common class
as if he was taking revenge on their whole sex. Perhaps it was really an
unusual kind of ritual of affinity with the people at the very bottom of
society that he was now eager to approach, rather than a pursuit of sexual
pleasure as such. He felt as if he had truly become one with the simple common
folk when he made love with one of them, with a forest tillers' daughter with a
blooming, bright complexion despite a diet including more grass-roots and
tree-bark than corn, or with the wife of some peasant who lifted her hemp skirt
for him while her husband was out for a few hours at the local market, their
bodies locked like two guiltless wild beasts in a thicket or in a barley-field
furrow.

We
met on the street; too many eyes watching!

I
like you, but I cannot speak; I may seem cold.

It's
not hard to climb the wall and make a hole,

I'm
already a farmer's, no help for it now.

This poem is written from the point of view of a peasant
woman he could not possess, but readers in later generations have wondered
whether the relationship was left unfulfilled if really there was that degree
of intimacy between them. During this period he mixed with all sorts of women,
regardless of whether they were pretty or not, young or old, of noble or humble
origin; but as soon as the world began to hate him, his love affairs became the
object of severe criticism in tandem with his unconventional poetic practices.

Apart
from such obvious forms of hostility, the criticisms raised by scholars of the
traditional school were equally sharp. One Yo Kyu-hyong, a scholar who was
referred to as a living "Anthology of Classical Poetry" (*) in the
later period of the Choson Dynasty, wrote about his poetry in his own anthology
of poems and essays, saying notably:

"The
man called Kim the Bamboo Hat is such an eccentric, his visions are closed and
uneven, like a rice jar tilted sideways. The elegance of his poetry is like
that of someone who has just fallen into a thorn bush. He aims to be a poet,
but his intentions are too vague for anyone to grasp his meaning, though it is
hard to listen to him without feeling compassion. He is boisterous, he laughs
readily and looses his temper easily; he is rough, yet he has the fault of
being too soft."

Such
comments seem to have been based on the impressions given by his poetry in its
second phase.

Obviously
there was a sense of resistance arising from the depths of himself. After five
or six years of boisterous life he slowly began to sober up from the intense
intoxication caused by popular acclaim, looking into himself and the state of
his poetry in a kind of stupor.

He
was so sure that he had become one with the weak and powerless at the lowest
rung of society; he never doubted the sincerity of his love for them, even when
he was not sure of what he believed. He proclaimed with great confidence that
the malice he showed towards the rich and powerful was expressed on behalf of
the lowest strata of society. When he engaged his talents in low quality
satire, with mockery verging on the obscene in its vituperation, he firmly
announced that that was the only way for him to be faithful to their honest
desires.

It
was none of it true, though. As time passed, he came to realize that there
remained in the inner recesses of his heart a conviction that he was doing them
a great favour, even while he thought that he had become one of them, and he
suffered intense anguish at the feeling that he was being hopelessly false.
Even his affection for them was at best nothing more than a matter of bearing
with their ignorance, their shallowness, selfishness and subservience; he had
not positively embraced them, rolling in pain with them.

On
close analysis, his belief that he had spoken on their behalf turned out only
to be an excuse while he was in fact expressing his own personal grudge against
society; a suspicion arose in his heart that even his claim to be obeying their
desires was nothing more than flattery of poor quality work. Towards the end of
this period, he slowly developed a deep sense of shame at the thought that he
too was a parasite, though in a different way, battening on the grudges of the
foolish, helpless lowest classes, even an oppressor or exploiter on a limited
scale.

He
felt even more confused when he reviewed the mess he had made of his poetry.
Undoubtedly, the common people's mode of life and forms of sensitivity
possessed some of the typical attributes of the period's culture, yet their
life and feelings as such could not be considered a culture.

Culture
was something constituted through a filtering of the ordinary and the diverse,
while poetry was an art that systematized those characteristics of culture in
the severest manner. Yet using the ordinary people's simplicity as an excuse,
claiming to be giving honest expression to their feelings, invoking their
exhuberance and their freedom, he had plunged his poetic art into a mire of
diversity and ordinariness, for which he felt utterly miserable.

All
through this period, he was obliged to cling on to the emotion of hatred until
in the end it turned into disgust and weariness. The characteristic features of
the poems he wrote in these years, the satire, the mockery and jeering, were
all essentially based on hatred and malice. In actual fact, his enmity toward
the world was at its most intense during this period. Hatred and enmity are
basically tensions that are bound to provoke weariness if they last too long.
He was gradually becoming disgusted at having to express time after time the
same hostility and antagonism.

I'm
wasting my poetry like this! As he detatched himself from the noisy crowds that
had surrounded him before, and reflected alone on his poetry, he sometimes
became apprehensive.

Besides
which, in the course of his travels year after year through the Kwanso region,
he gained more information about Hong Kyong-rae, a knowledge that finally shook
the very foundations of the second phase of his poetry on which he had embarked
so triumphantly.

"In
the end, you know, he and his gang were no different from the king and his
ministers at the royal court, I mean all who regarded power and authority as
the highest good and did not hesitate to do whatever was necessary in order to
grasp them. A Righteous Cause? Of course, outwardly there was something like
that. But if you look at it from another angle, you'll see that the goal they
were really pursuing was to take the place of those who had gained control of
all the privileges at court and excluded them. The poor folk who followed them?
Don't make me laugh!Shall I tell
you what their supporters were like, compared with those who now support the status
quo? They were the alienated local gentry who harboured a grudge against
the successful nobility of the capital; the newly rising landowners who quailed
before the authority and cultural traditions of the existing land-owning class
because of their humble origins and shallow education, even if they had managed
to save money and buy some bits of land; the merchants of the Kaesong district
whose commercial interests had been encroached on by the merchants from Seoul
who enjoyed the support of the central government; mining speculators and
wandering labourers whose life was relatively unstable compared with the
peasants who relied on the land for their living, whether they had enough to
eat or starved; there were members of the local militias, too, and clerks in magistrates'
offices, all with grudges against the high officials appointed and sent by the
central government. Those were the basis of Hong Kyong-rae's forces. If such
people take responsibility for a righteous cause, while bearing obvious grudges
against the existing privileged class, what do you expect? Being so divided,
surely they would be prepared to say anything to bring even a single stupid
commoner under their banner? Of course, some folk may have innocently believed
them and decided to take up their cause, but those are only poor victims, and
not a proof that Hong Kyong-rae was a righteous man. The widespread feelings
among the low-class people in this area? You ought not to trust that. It's a
particular emotion generated locally among the Kwanso population, a bitterness
born when they saw their fathers, brothers and husbands being killed, innocent
and guilty alike, by the government troops. Bitter feelings on their own are
too weak and impotent, so they drew on the idea of a righteous cause that Hong
Kyong-rae had invented to mobilize them. So don't go making a lot of noise
about Hong Kyong-rae's righteousness, or about your grandfather; because he was
unlucky enough to get caught up in those months' commotion he died shamefully
in the eyes of both camps. I'm sure you bear resentment and bitterness inside
yourself; but there was no great righteous cause capable of transcending
society's systems and traditions."

That was what a white-haired old scholar
he met by chance quietly told him one autumn day, after he had been in the
Kwanso region for nearly five years; it was during a visit he made to Myohyang
Mountain, accompanied by people who had generously supplied him with food and
drinks for several months while he was in Anju. The scholar belonged to the
local gentry of Kwaksan and when young had at first taken part in the plotting
of Hong Kyong-rae, Wu Kun-chik and Yi Hi-jo but soon, growing disillusioned
with their so-called righteous cause and other such ideas, he had washed his
hands of them and gone to live in hiding up in the mountains.

Starting
with that, together with various points he had already felt doubtful about,
slowly his new discoveries began to diminish the impact of the emotion provoked
by Won Myong-dae five years before in Dabok Village. It became obvious that Won
Myong-dae, only eighteen at the time and with a simple soldierly character, had
exaggerated, making the righteous cause of Hong Kyong-rae much larger and more
splendid than it had actually been in his account of it. The same was true with
his interpretation of his grandfather. Won Myong-dae had seen what he wanted to
see and had understood his grandfather as he wanted to understand him.

Eventually,
his feelings of resentment and bitterness were forced to return to what they had
been before. Indeed, all his emotions were forced back to their previous state.
In the end, his poetry too. But he had gone too far. His reputation in the eyes
of the world had for long now been on a one-way road of no return; likewise his
poetry. During this period he frequently dreamed he had fallen into a swamp,
from which he was struggling desperately to escape, but to no avail.

29.

It
was not long, however, before he had an opportunity to escape from that
helpless state in which his poetry was mired, although it was an enormously
cruel experience for him. It was the spring of his thirty-eighth year.

Savage
lands have no flowers.

Savage
lands have no flowers?

Savage
lands have no flowers, they say.

But
how can a land have no flowers?

He had spent the whole winter in the market town of
Kaechon. On that day, as on any other, he had managed to impress various groups
of people at the market with a bogus poem in the morning, and got them to buy
him drinks. Yet all the while he felt depressed, and was sitting in an inn
alone when someone came looking for him.

"A
scholar called Noh Jin asked me to deliver this poem to you with his best
wishes for your health. He would like to hear what comments a renowned poet
like yourself has to make about it. He asks you to read it."

A
man in servant's dress had asked the innkeeper where the poet was, and had
presented him with a letter. At the name of Noh Jin, he felt his heart sink,
and when he opened the envelope, instead of a letter he drew out a familiar-looking
piece of poetry. He quickly read it through:

Kim
Ik-sun, you were a great loyal subject

descended
from generations,

while
Chong was nothing but a mediocre official.

Your
family was that of the mighty Kims,

the
clan of the Changdong Kims,

Your
given name of Sun was renowned throughout the capital.

Yet
you gained the reputation of one

who
surrendered to barbarians

and
Chong earned a hero's name equal to that of Yue Fei.

There were only six lines out of the original
thirty-six, but it was clearly the poem he had composed at the poetry
competition in Chongsong nineteen years before. That poem he longed to forget,
yet could not forget. Noh Jin too he longed to forget, like the poem, yet could
not. "But why has he sent me this poem?" he wondered, while he rubbed
his chest with one hand, as he felt the former pain seem suddenly to revive.
But the pain only grew more acute, while he still could not figure what was Noh
Jin's intention.

"Well,
sir? The master told me to bring back your reply."

The
man in servant's clothes asked him this while he felt vacant. He thought he saw
a faint mocking smile on the man's lips. As if prompted by that, he seemed to
hear Noh Jin's cold voice ringing in his ear.

"Once
you were busy getting social promotion by selling your grandfather's name. Now
you are enjoying a false reputation in the market streets by using the same
grandfather's name. Aren't you sneaking a ride on the common people's
resentment, and making a living out of it for yourself? You shameless wretch,
do you dare say you write poetry?"

If
his belief in Hong Kyong-rae and in his grandfather had not been shaken to the
very roots by this time, that voice might not have shocked him so much. He
pressed both hands to his breast, feeling a pain more intense than that of
nineteen years ago. Once more the servant asked him:

"What
do you think, sir? What reply shall I take back?"

"It's
very well written. . ."

He
had scarcely said it, when he felt a nauseous lump rise suddenly into his
throat. Taken by surprise, he spat it out and saw it was a clot of crimson
blood, just like nineteen years before.

It
is sometimes said that Noh Jin sent him that piece of poetry out of jealousy at
his talent. That Noh Jin wrote that poem himself in an attempt to drive him out
of the Kwanso region where Noh Jin claimed to be the best master in the
rhetorical style of the government service examinations. It is wrong to
attribute the authorship of that poem to Noh Jin, and above all it is going
much too far to interpret Noh Jin's intention in so mundane a manner.

Nonetheless,
after that incident he left Kwanso and never once set foot there again.

30.

He
felt deeply apprehensive as he left the Kwanso area; perhaps he might never
again be able to write a poem? "I have lost poetry." Having decided
to believe that, he spent the next two years in a kind of frenzy of jesting and
eccentric behaviour.

Yet
he was still a poet for all that. Although it might undergo various
transformations, poetry had become an essential way of living for him. Once the
shock he had received back there in Kwanso had subsided and he had reached the
less troubled age of forty, gradually his poetic inspiration began to spring up
again, in a manner appropriate to his age. In spite of his apprehensions, his
poetry entered a third phase of transformation.

The
poetry of this period developed around a meditative, introspective feeling.
Now, instead of the exaggerated emotionalism of the early period or the
anti-social acrimony of the second phase, a warm sympathy and comprehension
towards the whole of human life became the dominant emotion. Forms and
techniques also changed. The passion for unconventional modes of writing found
in the second period gave way to a respect for traditional norms, while the
earlier attachment to techniques full of novelty and wit was gone.

In
a lonely tavern under a cold pine tree

I
recline at my leisure, like a man from a different world.

I
play with the clouds in valleys nearby,

Enjoy
bird-song for company beside the streams.

Why
should I grow rough because society is in uproar?

I
regale myself with poems and wine.

When
the moon rises, I recall old times

And
gently fall into sweet dreams.

This poem, entitled "Reciting for Myself,"
shows well the main characteristics of his poetry in this phase, while the next
example, "A Bowl of Gruel," is equally representative of the period.
This poem is widely read even today; it goes roughly as follows:

The
gruel in the bowl on this little four-legged table

Is
so thin it reflects the pale azure clouds.

Please
don't be ashamed, master of the house.

Why,
I love to see green hills reflected in water.

"On Seeing the Corpse of a Beggar" is likewise
a poem from this same period, in which he reveals controlled emotions as he
expresses his sympathy for an abandoned life:

I
don't know your first name, or your last.

Which
river, what mountain did you call home?

Flies
swarm in early sunlight to eat your rotten flesh,

At
sunset crows croak to comfort your lonely soul.

One
short walking-staff is all you bequeath,

With
two handfuls of rice you got by begging.

I
beg of you, villagers living just down the road,

Bring
one basket of earth to keep off the wind and frost.

In
this period he showed his commiseration toward the poor and wretched, not only
in poems but also in action. In the "Haejang Anthology" mentioned
earlier can be found the following lines:

In
cold weather and hot, he always went about in thinly lined white clothes; once
somebody made a new set of clothes for him, padded with coton, which he put on
without any fuss. He rolled up the clothes he had been wearing into a bundle
that he slung over one shoulder and went on his way; along the road he met a
man shivering with cold so he took off the padded clothes he was wearing and
gave them to the man, donning once more the old clothes he had tied into a
bundle. . .

He seems at this
time to have been meditating on humanity and human existence, not from any
superficial social consciousness but viewing humanity as one part of Nature.
Undoubtedly that was the way in which he found himself expressing the
deeply-felt compassion inspired by mankind's inborn finiteness and solitude,
the inescapable burden of weariness and sorrow.

It
is not so very difficult to see why his poetry and his life underwent such a
change. It is, however, a wearisome task and makes a boring tale, to keep
trying to fathom the depths of some unknown person's consciousness and present
that in a neat logical order. In short, it can be surmised that the aesthetic
experience accumulated in the course of those two different phases in which he
wrote two entirely different kinds of poetry, as well as a change in his
aesthetic ideas due to age as he advanced into the latter part of his life, and
the expanding depth of insight into the world he had gained, all combined to
form the basis for that transformation.

Those
old commonplaces about human existence that say Man comes from Nature and goes
back to it, or Each one comes here alone and returns alone, ought to be enough
to consitute one major factor in the maturation of a poet so plunged in
meditation and introspection.

31.

He
went on his way. Walking along quiet hillside paths, with no sign of any other
human being, his steps were light and quick. It was as if he was borne by the
breeze when a breeze was blowing, floated after the clouds when clouds were
floating, sought for wild flowers when he saw wild flowers, was lured by the
birds when they were singing.

He
had wasted a large part of his life in a journey through two diametrically
opposed worlds and ways of knowing. First he had been obliged to pass through a
world of affirmations, acceptances and conservatism, with its own ways of
knowledge, devoting to that his childhood, beautiful though it might now seem
with its loneliness and sorrows, to say nothing of a major part of his fiery
youth. Life in that world assumed as its essential forms endurance, survival,
achievement, and pleasure, while the main focus of knowledge was the conviction
that whatever is happening now is utterly right, that whatever exists here
must all necessarily be respected and preserved.

However,
the star of deviation that was guiding his life did not allow him to stay and
live content in such a world and way of knowing. As his youth was fading away
in sorrow, a new world and way of knowing caught hold of his soul where it lay
bleeding from the twists of a cruel fate. It demanded recognition that a world
where living beings are forced to accept oppression, deprivation and agony, and
all that is happening now, is utterly false and wrong, that whatever
exists here must all necessarily be destroyed, then be born again.

He
threw himself into that world and way of knowledge with a passion that was the
more intense for being so dark. It too, however, was not a world in which one
can grow old comfortably, not a way of knowledge allowing one to die in faith.
Where can you find sunlight without shadows, outside without inside, front
without back? Worlds and ways of knowing likewise had their double natures, the
tensions between which were nothing but idle songs sung here and now.

After
this, for a long while he spent dreary-seeming hours disputing as to which of
the two was right or wrong. Sometimes he would rebuke the two antipodal worlds
and ways of knowing together, as if he had come to a total understanding of the
cosmos and life, and sometimes he would embrace them both, then writhe in
agony. But since he had no final answer, he remained desolate; the two worlds
and ways of knowing had turned their backs on him so stubbornly that he was
left forlorn. The pursuit of moderation and harmony between those two, so
radically opposed to one another, was not the end of disputes but their
beginning. When the negatives dominated, inevitably the two became utter foes,
while they did not become friends when the positives had the upper hand.

In
the end, he turned with new expectation to Nature. He realized that his sense
of desolation derived from his involvement in human disputes, and he therefore
moved away from the villages and market-places, freeing himself from the
consciousness of people who always felt unbearably empty and insecure if they
had not opted for one side or another. His withdrawal was equally for the sake
of his poetry, that was by now reeling from the wounds it had received from
worldly disputes.

Ancient
wisdom frequently derives from an intimation that Nature is the archetype of
all knowledge, all beauty, all truth, all holiness. In actual fact, he too had
nurtured his knowledge in accordance with such ancient wisdom, distinguishing
the beautiful, the true, and the holy from all that was not so, and he strove
to bring the imitation of that into his poems from the very start. But at that
time he had not yet attained the contemplation, if we may call it that, the
self-immersion that constitute the essence of the ancient roadway leading into
Nature.

Now,
however, it was different. Now he was exploring and searching the very depths
of Nature; not the paradigm of Nature that forms the compulsory object of
repetitious study, but Nature as the ideal model of all values, corresponding
to the fundamental needs of the inner self. Although that unity or oneness with
Nature that he and his poems strove so hard to attain, and perhaps in the end
attained, was still far away, he was now entering a world and way of knowing
quite different from his previous experience, in the sense that he was slowly
moving away from considerations of utilitarian effectiveness.

Autumn
was already far advanced and the mountainsides were covered with red maples so
bright that the trees seemed ablaze. As he gazed at the sky, so blue it seemed
the colour would come off if he passed a hand across it, and the contrasting
brilliant red maple leaves, he realized that he recognized the spot. It was the
slope at the foot of Ninth Moon Mountain that he had climbed one day in his
remote childhood together with his father and elder brother, both of them now
dead.

He
did not know what so attracted him, but after the Diamond Mountains it was the
mountain he visited most frequently. Though the road might vary, he passed
there almost every year, and this year, quite accidentally, he happened to pass
by way of that lower slope which had remained so long buried in his childhood
memories.

He
was filled with sadness to realize that, while the mountain remained the same,
he himself had changed: from being a boy of seven he was now a middle-aged man
with hair already turning grey at the temples. One of the qualities people
afterwards most admired about him was the way his sense of wit and humour
transformed pathos and suffering into a fine poem in a moment. On that day,
too, he tried to relieve the sadness that suddenly overwhelmed him by writing a
comic poem:

Last
year I passed by Ninth Moon Mountain at the ninth moon,

This
year I passed by Ninth Moon Mountain at the ninth moon.

Every
year I pass by Ninth Moon Mountain at the ninth moon,

Ninth
Moon Mountain's beauty is always at the ninth moon.

While
he was cooling himself under a maple tree, reciting to himself this
seven-character quatrain with its eight repetitions of the same words, someone
suddenly shouted in a harsh voice from the dark woods:

"Hey
you! Don't move! If you do I'll bore a hole in your skull!"

He
came to himself with a start and looked in the direction the voice had come
from; a group of brigands was slowly advancing towards him, brandishing sabres
and spears, while in their centre was a sturdy young man aiming a matchlock at
him. There was nothing particularly surprising about it, bands of robbers could
frequently be met with along the secluded hill-top paths.

In
his time, robbers teemed in every deep mountain valley. Often all designated
collectively as the Fire Brigands: there were the Bright Flame Brigands, the
Vast Fire Party, the Green Forest Party, while on a somewhat larger scale there
were gangs claiming to be the heirs of ancient bands such as the Poor Folks'
Party and the Master-murdering Club.

They
were for the most part vagrants, people who had fallen victim to the calamities
such as drought, pestilence, or the conflicts between political factions, that
marked the later Choson Era. But on closer scrutiny, they fell into two broad
categories. One group had goods and property as their sole aim, any other
claims they made were meant only to justify their having become robbers; the
other group was composed of master brigands, different from the first in both
aims and claims. There were not many of them, but some among those master
brigands were determined to take over the world, proclaiming equality and
prosperity for all.

It
was not so very unusual for him to meet this kind of group in the long course
of his wandering life. And he had few reasons to fear encounters with them, no
matter who they were. Not only after he had begun to be widely known, but even
before that, when he was still completely unknown, he was essentially the same
kind of vagrant as they were and therefore was allowed to go free.

However,
that day it was different. The group that had captured him showed no sign of
recognition, though he produced his bamboo hat and cane and declined his
identity as a poet; even after he told them that he was really just a poor
underpriviledged fellow like them, they refused to let him go. They coaxed him
along, shouted him down, and finally led him off to their mountain lair.

It
was only when he arrived in their fortress, situated in a secluded valley of
Obong Mountain, that he realized he had fallen in with one of those bands of
master brigands he had hitherto only heard about. Their lair was a stone-walled
fortification, set in a precipitous spot at the far end of a valley, easy to
defend but difficult to attack; it was quite unlike the dens of the petty
thieves who robbed travellers of their bags along the road. The positioning of
the guards and the discipline they observed were more rigorous than that found
in any ordinary government office.

Above
all, what struck him most forcefully was their leader. In that middle-aged man
with his pale yet somehow darkish face he could find none of the bravado and
swagger often seen in such leaders. He had no seat covered with animal skins,
but was sitting on a rush mat in a simple mud hut without any escorting
bodyguards; after hearing a noisy report he emerged quietly into the courtyard.
With his small stature he did not look particularly strong. What was
astonishing was the attitude of respect his followers manifested. As soon as he
emerged, all those men, numbering more than a hundred and ferocious as tigers,
froze to the spot and respectfully brought their hands together in greeting.

The
man scrutinized him silently, with no trace of expression on his face. The
intense gaze seemed to come piercing through his cheeks and for some unknown
reason it quite overwhelmed him. However, there was a faint hint of learning in
his look and behaviour, which reassured him a little.

"I
am merely a traveller with no possessions, captain. The only thing I have that
you could take is my life, and it would be useless to you, so I hope you'll let
me go."

When
he spoke, feeling really frightened, the men nearby shot fierce warning glares
at him.

"Don't
call him captain, he's Master Chesei. If you take us for ordinary bandits and
insult him, there'll be no mercy for you."

The
men shouted at the top of their voices, yet not a sound seemed to reach the
ears of the chieftain they called Master Chesei. He simply observed his
prisoner for a while without a word, then spoke, quietly shaking his head.

"When
our young comrades go out on long journeys and keep watch along the roads, it
is not simply to get money. Sometimes they go out to take lives."

The
voice was low but it had the effect of a cold wind blowing in his back.

"What
do you hope to do with the lives you take?"

"It
is not that we have any use for them; it is simply to reduce the number of
useless lives that are wasting the world's resources."

"What
kind of life do you consider to be useless?"

"Those
who eat without working; those who expend without producing. I will ask you a
question. Do you go out to work in the fields? Do you harvest for yourself the
food you eat?"

At
that, he felt he could guess what kind of a man this chieftain was. Here he was
meeting by chance a mind placed at one extreme point of the conflicts he
himself had experienced long before, standing here deep in the mountains
exactly as if he was in some market-place. He looked at him suddenly with a
rising curiosity. The stillness of the man's features was like that found in
deep waters, it reflected coldly an ideological conviction built up over a long
period of time. For some reason it provoked his pride and made him speak
frankly.

"No.
I have not worked or harvested for many years now."

"Then
have you woven cloth? Have you made others warm with that cloth and so earned
food to eat?"

"No,
not at all. And not only I, for no man in this country ever weaves cloth."

"Just
answer my questions. Are you a craftsman, then? Can you forge or make tools
that serve the common good?"

"No,
not at all. I have never even sat near a bellows."

"Judging
by your bundle, you seem not to be a trader who goes around distributing goods
and living on the profits; judging by your face, you can't be a butcher. Then
you must be a gentleman-scholar."

"No,
not that either. I have never dreamed of becoming a statesman living on his
annuity, have never wanted to become a scholar earning a living by his
learning, I cannot be called a gentleman-scholar."

At
that point in his replies, the chieftain's voice became cold and fierce.

"In
any case, you are someone who eats without working and expends without
producing. The lives we take belong to thieves like you."

Having
anticipated from the start what might be coming, he was not unduly surprised,
even at what might turn out to be a rigorous death sentence. He felt as if he
was throwing a joke at a half-baked nobleman as he asked:

"I
would like to ask you a question if I may, not at all with the thought of
grovelling for my life, but to satisfy my curiosity: could you please tell me
what you yourself produce? What do you produce in order to get what you need to
eat, to dress, to expend?"

"I
have produced dreams for the poor to believe in and rely on, I have produced
future days they can wait for patiently. And in future I want to produce a
better world."

"Well
then, I also produce. I have produced poetry."

"You
say you have produced poetry?"

"I
would never suggest to a person like you that poetry as such is something
produced. But if dreams can be said to be produced, and hopes, then perhaps
poetry too can be termed a production. For poetry too can produce dreams and
hopes. But surely, if you want to produce a better world, you will need far
more than you say? Other emotions, besides dreams and hopes. Now poetry can be
a useful tool in producing those other emotions."

He
had not been mistaken in guessing that the man had a background of brush and
ink. There was no way of telling what stage he had reached in the course of his
studies before the direction of his life had changed, but at least he knew the
outward value of poetry. The man studied him again for a while in silence, then
asked:

"Without
doubt, to produce a better world, many more things are necessary. Tell me, now.
Can you, by means of poetry, produce fear and a feeling of impotence?"

"It
is possible."

"And
can you likewise produce courage and belief?"

"That
too is possible."

"In
that case, you are someone who produces. You may live and continue to dress,
eat and expend. But you must stay here and produce for us. You must labour to
produce fear and impotence in our enemies, courage and belief in our comrades
here and those who are on our side down below."

Naturally
he understood what the man wanted. This master brigand was asking for his help
in the production of his ultimate goal by employing one of the functions of
poetry that he had rejected, considering it too worldly a role, although some
people simply called it utilitarian.

Yet,
without quite knowing why, he felt a sudden temptation. No doubt it was because
he had never been able to explore thoroughly such roles, occupied as he had
been in throwing the market streets into turmoil with his noisy effusions as a
"people's poet." In those days the most his poetry had done was to
poke fun at the rich and powerful, but that only made them look ridiculous so
that people laughed, it could never make them shake with fear; it merely
expressed sympathy and compassion for the poor and weak, it could never make
them all rise up together to open the way to a new world by the courage and
belief it gave them.

"Perhaps
so far I have only been peeling away the husk of the world and ways of knowing?
I have devoted myself passionately to denial and rejection but it seems that
the essential core of the world and its knowledge does not lie there but rather
in the will to destroy and create anew, tasks that I have negkected. To break
down the old, corrupt world and open the way for a new, more liveable world!
Why, if ever my poetry could help to achieve even one little part of that task,
it would be performing a great service! Who knows, perhaps that great service
may take the place of whatever that undefinable thing is that I am at present
trying to find in Nature."

He
went so far as to entertain such belated expectations. But before he undertook
to produce what this master brigand wanted, there was one question bothering
him that he needed an answer to:

"What
do you think about producing voluntary remorse? What about the will to change
oneself beginning from the top? Don't you think that if you produced such
things and distributed them among your enemies, you might be able to open the
way to a better world without harsh, violent battle?"

He
asked the question cautiously, Master Chesei's expression changed for the first
time.

"Such
things must not be produced! It's not just that it is very difficult to produce
them; it has already been clearly established in the course of thousands of
years of history that they serve no purpose even if they are produced. When did
the rich and powerful ever repent and change voluntarily? If the world had been
changing, even ever so slowly, over the thousands and thousands of years since
it began, would it be in the shape it's in now? They merely pretend to change
if they find they cannot keep on any longer as they are. What difference does
it make to a hungry monkey if you vary the rules and give it four acorns in the
morning and three in the evening instead of three in the morning and four in
the evening?"

"That
is not quite so. For example, the productions of Confucius and Mencius have
undoubtedly changed the substance of the world for the better. Certainly they
taught the poor and under-priviledged to bow their heads and accept their lot
patiently, but didn't they also advise the powerful and wealthy to examine
their consciences and amend their lives? And in the times when their
productions were respected, did the world not clearly become a better place
than it had been before?"

"That
is precisely the reason why I hate those long-bearded scholars with their high
hats. They have been extolling Confucius and Mencius for two thousand years
now, but how much has the world changed for the better in all that time? Those
scholarly curs have simply used the produce of Confucius and Mencius as a way
of currying favour with the high and mighty! While they are out among the
common people they talk of the demands of the royal way and discuss the
humanity and justice required of those who rule; once they get into royal
service, all they do, every man jack of them, is bark at their master's
command."

His
voice, that had so far only been vehement now became a cutting sword.

"We
cannot wait any longer. It would be more harmful for us to say that the rich
and powerful can show remorse and reform themselves voluntarily and that
therefore the world can become a better place withouta revolution, than to believe that the world as it is is
good enough. How long have we been waiting? Are you saying that we ought to
wait still longer, deluded by that kind of hopeless talk?"

There
may be various explanations as to why he stayed without the least resistance up
in the mountain fortress and devoted himself for a while to that strange form
of production. One reason could be his reluctance to throw away his life for
nothing; another might be a newly aroused interest in the world of those living
at the foot of the mountain, motivated by the fresh shock he had received from
the Master's logic. But probably the most important thing of all was his
curiosity as a poet.

In
actual fact, the ideas on the place of poetry and its uses which this man
propounded as a creed were neither very unfamiliar nor very new to him. Yet
this opportunity to apply poetic theory to a concrete situation and confirm its
truthfulness by direct observation, was bound to exercise a fascination that no
poet could easily forsake. Whatever the reason, he stayed in the mountain
fortress and readily put his poetic skills at their service.

32.

Soon
winter came and the mountain stronghold was buried deep in snow. Because it was
hard to go down from the fortress in a big group in the snow, and because there
was nothing to be gained by lurking along the paths since they were blocked,
the entire band spent the winter holed up in the camp, with the exception of a
few nimble-footed youths who went to spy secretly in the nearby villages and
some who kept watch at the top of the mountain behind the fortress.

The
vision that Master Chesei produced and distributed among them all was far more
wide-ranging and detailed than might at first appear. Old ideals and systems,
including republican notions of universal harmony, the Taedong system of tax
reform, the Chongjon proposal on land reform, the Kyunsu system for an equal
distribution of goods, and others, were all delicately woven together to form
the basis of his dream of the better world he hoped to produce, and indeed, if
it it had only been possible to accomplish it, nothing could have been better.
Besides, at first sight the methods and processes for the production of the
dream were organized in a practical and coherent manner. First they had to
prepare water where the fish could swim, then get the fish to multiply in
number; finally they would take to the dry land and sweep everything before
them; they were already well advanced with the first stage. While keeping Ninth
Moon Mountain as their main base, their plan was to launch attacks on the
nearby townships and so, by increasing the area not under government control,
to increase as much as possible the area of water where they could swim.

The
place that Master Chesei had in mind as the first area to be removed from
government control was the town of Sinchon. Once spring came the plan was to
force their way into the administrative offices there and gain control of the official
seal; then they would hold out as long as they could, meanwhile so overawing
the whole township that in future it would remain water they could swim in. For
even if government troops arrived in force and retook the town, driving them
back into their mountain fastness, the citizens would find it hard to ignore a
power that had once controlled their lives.

While
Master Chesei and his young comrades were undergoing hard mental and physical
training in preparation for the coming spring, he devoted himself to the
production he had promised them. At least, with the themes fixed in advance and
the purpose clear, that kind of production was bound to prove easier than any
he had previously tried. For the only thing he had to work hard on boiled down
to a question of technical challenges involving the right choice of words and
the adjustment of rhythm and rhyme.

Before
very long he began to pour out his produce and Master Chesei chose those poems
which he thought would help his own production most effectively, distributing
them according to the plans he had made. As midwinter drew near, the comrades
in the fortress started using new songs to heighten their hostility, nourishing
their courage and belief. Most of the works he produced at this time are lost,
but a few have been handed down (*):

On
Ninth Moon Mountain snow is falling.

Raise
swords and spears, we're off to war.

Comrades
killed, felled by the foes' swords

I'll
repay your enemies now.

Raise
aloft our righteous banner

Under
it we'll fight and die.

Cowards,
go, if you want to.

We'll
defend the banner here.

Don't
lament us when we're dead.

We
gave our lives fighting the foe.

Each
drop of blood we shed will blossom,

Flowering
as a better world.

Another batch of songs which he produced was delivered
by the young comrades who went to reconnoitre in the villages at the foot of
the mountain for the benefit of their enemies there. Not songs for their
enemies to sing, of course, but to hear being sung.

Soon
after the lunar New Year, eerie songs unlike any ever heard before began to
spread in the town of Sinchon. A young serf chopping fodder for the cows could
be heard humming to himself:

In
the dark, a lamp hung up, I chop the hay.

My
limbs are weary from the weight of firewood on my back.

Slicing
away, slicing away, I chop the hay.

I'll
chop off the white hands of the rich

And
cut off greedy officials' heads too.

A butcher sitting astride a writhing pig could be heard
singing enthusiastically as he cut its throat:

Today
I'm killing a pig for you

To
make your belly fatter still.

I
cut the pig's throat with a hungry stomach,

One
day my knife will cut your throat,

I'll
slice out that thick fat paunch of yours.

And the wife of an old peasant would suddenly start
singing a weeding-song in the midst of her night-long weaving:

Hey
now, comrades all, let's go to the fields and weed.

Foxtail,
cocklebur, sedges, and worts,

Let's
root them out and burn them up.

So
much for the fields, but who'll weed the world?

The
scholars and the rich, who will get rid of them?

Let's
not worry! Ninth Moon Mountain's there!

Ninth
Moon Mountain comrades will weed the world.

They'll
make a better world, no scholars, no rich men.

As Master Chesei had anticipated, these products proved
highly effective. The young comrades up in the fortress, eager to set about
making a new world, deplored the spring's slowness in coming; some even came to
the Master and urged him to attack in the snow. They were all so full of
burning hatred for the enemy, of death-defying courage, and an invincible
belief in victory, that they could no longer be satisfied with only killing in
songs, dying in songs, and winning victories in songs.

The
effect in the villages at the foot of the mountain was equally remarkable.
Though the songs were only sung in secret among the lower classes, some members
of the upper class inevitably had sharp ears and before the first month of the
year was out, the songs were known among the nobles and the rich merchants in
Sinchon and even by the officials in the local government office. Shocked by
their extraordinary, cruel contents, the magistrate sent out emissaries to
investigate the matter and, at the same time, tried to forbid the songs, but to
no avail. The harder they tried to supress the songs, the faster they spread,
bringing in their wake a wave of fear and helplessness that spread like an
epidemic. Some of the rich and noble families panicked, packed up their
belongings and moved into nearby cities with high and solid fortifications, or
went all the way to the capital to be close to the king and the metropolitan
garrison.

Thanks
to the effectiveness of his productions, he was treated like a staff officer or
a high-ranking official. Even the Master, who had for a time acted towards him
in a cold, stern manner, warmed and finally accepted him as a real companion.
Yet none of that made him feel happy or cheerful. All he experienced that
winter was a sense of anxiety and impatience, not unlike what a scholar feels
when he has left an examination after handing in an unsatisfactory paper.

At
long last the apparently interminable winter ended and spring came. As the snow
that had been piled deep on all sides of the mountain melted, the roads below
opened to traffic and news began to arrive from far away places that had been
cut off. Once they had entered the second month of the year, occasional
passers-by brought news of insurrections that had troubled the southern
regions, while an epidemic had ravaged Kwanbuk, leaving the population restless
and disturbed.

As
soon as the roads leading down from the mountain were open, the young comrades
began to manifest an agitation that Master Chesei was only able to restrain
with difficulty; therefore once these reports were confirmed he decided to
launch the attack at once. He had originally intended to wait for the spring
famine before moving, when there might be more widespread disturbances, but he
judged from the rumours coming in that the time was already ripe.

The
day of battle the young comrades in the fortress had beenawaiting for so long dawned at last. On
the third day of the third month almost two hundred of them, armed with the
weapons they had spent the winter forging and sharpening, to say nothing of the
courage and faith resulting from their prolonged training as well as from the
songs produced for them, headed down towards Sinchon, which they had targeted
from the first. Their spirits were high, not only because several times they
had attacked the place and taken bounty, but because this time they were better
prepared than ever before.

"You
may not be able to carry weapons and fight, still you must go down with us. You
need to check for yourself the result of your products so as to prepare an even
more effective production in times to come."

At
Master Chesei's command he joined the rearguard ranks of their company. Killing
and destruction were not his share, but the uneasiness he felt made him eager
to verify the result of what he had produced. Perhaps too, unconsciously, he
was hoping he might find an opportunity of breaking free from undefined Nature
and return to the more definite world of disputes and oppositions found in
populated streets and villages.

They
left the fortress at noon and arrived at dawn the next morning in the hills
behind Sinchon; there they spent the day resting. After they had recovered from
the fatigue caused by the all-night march, they planned to wait for nightfall
then launch a surprise attack on the government offices.

Things
began to go wrong from that point onward. On previous expeditions they had
remained hidden in the bushes in a deathly silence and waited for night to
fall, but that day was different. Under the combined influence of Master and
poet, they threw to the winds all the caution that they naturally should have
observed. On account of the groundless emotions filling them, the product of
mere ideals unrelated to their real strength, the valley where they were hiding
rang with unnecessary noise; detected by woodcutters and the village women
coming to gather early spring shoots, they had already been reported to the
local government office before sunset. They made a grave error by not marching
straight to their target that morning, weary though they were.

The
poems he produced and sent down to the enemy had failed to produce the degree
of fear and helplessness that Master Chesei had counted on. Many of the town's
rich people, government officals and their clerks, had been seized with fear at
the hair-raising songs that had appeared as if from nowhere during the winter months,
as well as the strange atmosphere reigning among the lower classes. That in
turn inevitably developed into a sense of powerlessness and defeatism, given
the corruption of the central government from which they could expect little
help. Such people had moved away to the capital or to larger fortresses where
there was a defense commander.

It
was quite another matter for those who felt they had too much to loose to be
able to leave their lands, or those who for one reason or another were obliged
to share the fate of the system as a whole. Their defensive instincts were
aroused and they prepared to repel the attack of this gang of unusual thieves,
fired not by mere emotions but by a resolute will to survive. They brought out
and cleaned rusty weapons that had for long been lying neglected, and repaired
the crumbling fortifications. They cajoled disgruntled military officers into
taking up their swords, gave food to those who were starving by reason of the
prolonged winter, and so to some degree calmed the anxieties of the citizens.
Being warned in advance of their movements thanks to the negligence with which
they approached the town, they were able to set up a truly cast-iron defence.

It
was the second watch, around ten in the evening, when the bandits came down,
fending the darkness only to find the local government office lit up by torches
as bright as broad daylight and surrounded by a force numbering several
hundreds composed of regular soldiers and local reservists reinforced by a
large number of youths. Unable to grasp this unexpected turn of events, Master
Chesei exclaimed:

"What
in the world is happening?"

He
too was at first unable to take it in. A poet he might be, yet how could even
he be expected to grasp the subtle laws by which, no matter how corrupt an
existing sytem may be, there will always be people who have no choice but to
defend it, while fear can inspire such people with a truly desperate courage
and determination? Yet even now, Master Chesei interpreted the situation in
their favour.

"They're
at their wits' end! Don't be taken in by their bluff!"

At
Master Chesei's order the band of young comrades, still intoxicated by their
songs, enthusiastically launched their doomed assault. Shouting battle-cries,
they aimed their matchlocks, waved spears and swords as they advanced, but the
final outcome was a disaster. Even before they reached the wall of the
government office, a dozen or so of the comrades had been hit by arrows and
then, on reaching the wall, another half-dozen fell like straws before the
defenders' swords.

In
the end, what made their defeat all the more decisive was the qualitative
change that had occurred within them. In the days when they had had no view of
the future, no fantasies about a better world, they had been brave men. So long
as they were nothing but ignorant bandits full of desperate violence and
undefined resentment, they were ready to go through fire and water in battle;
but now they had become completely different men, after a whole winter's
baptism into Master Chesei's reasoning and their poet's emotionalism. Having
begun to use their reason, they started to reason about their own lives; and as
they began to control emotions with the poems their poet had produced, to some
degree art had weakened them. All winter long they had been slaughtering hosts
of rich people and corrupt officials in words, procuring for themselves a
vicarious satisfaction that now proved a hindrance in obtaining from them the
courage they had formerly displayed.

"My
young comrades, what has happened to you? What has become of your former
courage and fighting spirit?"

Coming
across one group running away in disarray in the midst of the battle, Master
Chesei could not hide his dismay.

"The
enemy's too strong! We need to go back to the fortress and make ourselves
stronger so we can beat them."

The
young fellows used reasoning in their reply. Their eyes were showing obvious
signs of fear but they stubbornly tried to deny the fact.

"If
you order us all to charge in and die, we'll do it. But in that case, who will
open the way to the new world? Who will save the poor mired in their
misery?"

In
the meanwhile a large group of townsfolk had gathered near the government
office. The Master suddenly shifted his attention to them, as he cried out:

"What
are you all doing? Help us drive out corrupt officials and their rotten regime,
let's build a new world! Let's make a nation where you will be in charge!"

Their
reaction, too, was completely different from what he expected. These were
people who had previously sided with them in secret even if they could not help
openly. Now that the products of Master and poet had combined, they naturally
ought to have been rushing forward with open arms but it was not happening.
They too had been fed full of emotions and reasoning. All winter long they had
been cutting the throats and slitting the bellies of countless hated scholars
and officials in song; after that they felt if anything less inclined than ever
to rise up with real swords in their hands. Instead, they had developed a
spectator psychology and they just stood there, gaping at a distance, as they
waited to see what the next bit of fun might be.

Master
Chesei nearly forced the young comrades from the spot and charged the office
once more, but without the support of the townspeople they were too few in
number. Again they lost a dozen or so men and were driven back a couple of
miles by the soldiers, who had now regained their self-confidence, before they
were able to get their ranks under control.

"There's
nothing more to be done now. Let's ransack some isolated rich houses then go
back up to the fort. Once we're there we'll recharge our strength and plan for
the future."

Master
Chesei changed their goal. But that too did not work out as planned. Not a single
bag of rice or a yard of silk remained in the houses of those rich families who
had taken fright and fled to the larger towns, while those who were too fat to
move had made their own preparations against attack. They had given dozens of
sturdy young farmhands plenty of food to eat then set them up as guards, at the
same time creating lines of communication with the neighbouring farmers, so
that when they attacked such a house they found it was as well defended as the
government office had been.

On
top of which each household had several fast horses ready to send for help to
nearby rich houses and the government office, so there was absolutely nothing
they could do.

After
their first attack on a wealthy house had ended in failure, as they were moving
on to another Master Chesei asked with a sigh:

"How
is it that even this kind of people have decided to stay put and fight?"

"Perhaps
because they have nowhere to run away to? Our songs have made them realize
that. . ."

He
spoke bitterly but left the sentence unfinished.

The
second house they attacked was smaller in size than the first and the number of
guards was less. There too a horse had been sent out to fetch help but judging
by the number of arrows being shot from inside and the brightness of the torchlight,
the band of young comrades might have been able to rob it and leave again
before the troops arrived, if they had only tried a little harder.

Perhaps
because they had already been obliged to take to their heels twice, here they
failed even to scale the shabby outer wall of the house. They made a lot of
noise, shouting to one another in loud voices, but even when they finally moved
to attack, it only took a few arrows flying out to send them retreating
helter-skelter.

News
must have got through, and the red glow of the torches borne by the soldiers
coming to the rescue could be seen drawing near.

"It's
too late! Retreat!"

At
last Master Chesei gave up, shouting the order in agonized tones.

By
the time they shook off their pursuers and arrived back at the foot of the
mountain where the way led up to their fastness, day was already breaking.
Master Chesei took his seat on a broad flat rock, first ordering his men to go
and rest on a secluded, sheltered ridge; some were wounded, all were deadly tired
from the futile all-night battle. Then he shut both eyes, and seemed plunged
deep in thought. Drawn somehow by an uneasy feeling, he drew near to where
Master Chesei was sitting and stood gazing at him in a kind of daze. A heavy
silence reigned for a long while, then suddenly the Master opened his eyes,
turned to him and spoke:

"You
can go now. You have not really produced what you promised at the beginning.
But certainly you have produced something sufficient to entitle you to leave in
safety. Do you know what it is?"

He
waited.

"A
warning to those who dream of revolution. If you are planning revolution, you
must beware of letting songs about insubstantial revolution be sung too loudly
in the streets. Day has only really broken when the whole forest is awake, the
chirping of a few birds waking early does not mean that day has come."

He
stood silent.

"On
the contrary, the noise of those early-rising birds may make the forest's
morning sleep far deeper and far longer. Often, if you go back to sleep again
after waking for a moment, you fail to wake up when day comes."

Master
Chesei wiped his weary eyes with a sleeve, then added in a cold voice:

"Be
off with you. Before I'm tempted to blame you for this failure."

Once
again, went on his way. Walking along quiet hillside paths, with no sign of any
other human being, his steps were light and quick. Shaking off the dust of the
world's debates about right and wrong; like a cloud, a breeze, a wild flower, a
bird.

33.

Afterwards,
how did his poetry change? Did his poetry, following his body, move slowly
closer toward old age and death? If legends and records are both equally silent
about his later life, is it because there was a reluctance to end by a mournful
decline the story of a life so overflowing with humour and wit, so marked by
exuberance and melancholy? Did his poetry really stagnate, as most people today
believe, after a third transformation, together with his body, finally reduced
to silence along some lonely and weary road?

Not
at all. Fifty is known as "the age of the knowledge of heaven" and
appropriately enough it was in the year he turned fifty that his poetry changed
once more. That year he unexpectedly met the Old Drunkard again while he was in
the Diamond Mountains and his poetry entered its last phase after long
wandering.

It
has not been emphasized much until now, but he had not forgotten the Old
Drunkard. Though it was twenty years since they had once met and parted, when
he was still young, and he had never seen him face to face in all that long
period, the impression and words left by the Old Drunkard deep in his heart had
not faded. Just like the Diamond Mountains, which he visited every year, as
time went by the Old Drunkard came rather to seem like the birthplace of his poetic
spirit, ever new, ever closer.

In
fact, not many years after they had gone their separate ways, he had felt a
desire to meet the Old Drunkard again. But in those first few years he mainly
went wandering in the Kwanbuk and the Kwanso regions, so that even though he
visited the Diamond Mountains yearly, it was no easy task to reach the Old
Drunkard's inn that lay near the foot of the mountain in the Kwandong area.
When he finally made up his mind and visited the place five or six years later,
there was no way he could meet either the old man or the woman he lived with.
When he inquired of the nearby villagers, all he could learn was that the woman
was the occupier of the newly built tomb on the sunny hillside across from the
inn.

After
that, whenever he visited the Diamond Mountains his heart would throb in
expectation that this time he might meet the Old Drunkard, a feeling no less
intense than the expectation of the magnificent scenery. When he had first met
him, he was already so advanced in years that he might well have been dead by
now, but for some reason he felt quite sure that the old man was still alive
and waiting for him somewhere in the very heart of the mountain, united with a
mysterious secret landscape that he had never so far seen. At last that year
they met again.

The
Old Drunkard was living in an isolated hermitage somewhere in the Outer Diamond
Mountains, true to his poetic ideals. It was a small temple run by an old
acquaintance of his; there the two spent three days and three nights talking
about poetry, like bosom friends who have longed for each other's company.He was surprised to see that his own
ideas on poetry had moved closer to those of the Old Drunkard, which he had
only vaguely understood in his youth, and he listened to him humbly. The old
man received his young friend, after a long absence, with a childlike happiness
and talked of the world, life, and poetry with a childlike sincerity. Their
talk was no one-sided affair, though.

He
had still not been able to get completely clear of the swamps of quarreling and
hatred, so that while the Old Drunkard strove to raise his poetic vision to a
higher level, he in turn tried to bring the Old Drunkard's ideas about poetry
back down to earth, feeling that they were soaring far too high, basing his
arguments on principles derived from his own bitter experience of life's
hardships. Their meeting was in many senses a union of one who had gone on
ahead and one who had followed close behind; it may fairly be said that the
priciples agreed between them there represented the essence of a vision that
the two poets had each finally attained at the end of their separate ways.

What
they said to each other is difficult to capture in the words of this world, no
record or report of it exists. It was the same with the poetry he composed
after that. His earlier poems had presupposed an audience and had been seen as
acts of dialogue, but his poetry now became a complete monologue. It is perhaps
partly because there was no one listening and he himself did not preserve
things but even if he had wished to write down those last works, there was no
writing system that could possibly do justice to them.

As
a result his poetry, which had undergone various stages of transformation,
finally had to be put into forms other than spoken words and written letters,
which was no easy matter. As soon as he ceased to compose poems as acts of
dialogue, he was no longer a poet as far as the world was concerned; once his
poetry took on a self-oriented purpose, his fame as a poet was over, there was
nobody who witnessed his last years. As far as other people were concerned, he
was nothing more than an old traveller passing their village, looking half
asleep and half awake, filled with a strange sense of self-contentment.

There
was one exception: his second son, Ik-kyun. Three years before his death,
Ik-kyun came from somewhere down in the South to bring him home, he was the
last person in the world to see him and know him for what he was. Let us
examine the last phase of his life and poetry by hearing how in the end Ik-kyun
failed to bring his father home.

After
his elder brother, Hak-kyun, had left for his foster-home, going to live with
his uncle's widow, Ik-kyun grew up under his mother's care as her only
remaining son. Once he had come of age and his family was more or less settled,
he began to search for his father. His filial concern was less for his father
in his lonely and weary wanderings than for his mother, a virtual widow
abandoned to endless solitude.

Communications
in those days were difficult, travel was extremely slow, so that it was no easy
matter to find someone who was all the time on the move. By the time Ik-kyun
reached a place where he heard that his father had been, he always found that
his father had moved on. Sometimes, following a false report, he travelled
hundreds of miles in vain, and once or twice he encountered imposters
pretending to be his father with a hat like his and a bamboo staff, who ran off
covered in shame.

What
made matters even more difficult for Ik-kyun was his father's own unwillingness
to return home. Twice he had found him, only to loose him again. Once, after he
had found him near Andong in Kyongsang Province, his father asked Ik-kyun to
get him a pair of straw shoes for the journey, then disappeared; another time
they were on the way home after he had found him near Ninth Moon Mountain, in
Hwang-hae Province, but he slipped away while Ik-kyun was asleep.

As
a result, when Ik-kyun caught up with his father for the last time at Hadong in
the southern part of the country, his resolve was very firm: never to leave him
alone for a moment, not once to let him out of his sight, never to be more than
one step away from him, to tie their clothes together when they slept and never
to sleep deeply. Underlying these resolves was a combination of pride and
resentment: "It's all very well for you, enjoying yourself wandering
around a whole life long, but what about me? what about mother? You may say it
was because of your grudge against the world, but don't you realize that your
behaviour only breeds new grudges. Don't you realize the bitterness I felt,
having to grow up hearing myself being called a fatherless bastard all the
time? You don't seem to consider the anguish mother felt, lying awake grieving
all night long when the flowers bloomed in spring or the leaves fell in autumn.
I wonder if you can imagine how she feels now, waiting there, her hatred and
bitterness diminished with the passage of time, yearning only to see you once
beside her before she dies. No. This time I'm never going to leave you
alone."

Faithful
to his resolve, Ik-kyun kept a really close watch on his father. When they
slept, he hid his bamboo hat, his clothes, and his straw shoes; when they were
awake, he never allowed himself to move more than a foot away from him. They
washed their faces at the river standing side by side, and he even followed him
when he went to relieve himself.

Strangely
enough, the father quietly accepted his son's vigilance. He clearly revealed, though
not in so many words, that this time he had no intention of thwarting his
efforts. Ik-kyun was more or less encouraged in this by the fact that he was
already fifty-three, too old to be a wanderer much longer, and since he was no
longer composing boisterous poems there were not the crowds of people
clustering around that he had seen on the previous occasions.

Two
days after they began their journey home, however, Ik-kyun had a strange
experience. They had just come over the mountain pass at Chupung; emerging from
behind a small bush after relieving himself, Ik-kyun found that his father had
disappeared from the shade of the old pine tree only five steps away where he
had been sitting to get his breath back after the climb. Ik-kyun's heart turned
over, and he clenched his teeth. "To the very end. . ." he thought,
and began to look for a place where he might have hidden. What happened then
was even more startling:

"What
are you up to? Have you lost something?"

Hearing
what seemed to be his father's voice, he turned, only to find him sitting
exactly where he had left him.

"Did
you go somewhere just now?"

Ik-kyun
asked, astonished at his sudden return from nowhere, but happy not to have lost
him. His father looked puzzled, as he replied: "I didn't budge an inch.
Why, is something wrong?"

That
was precisely what Ik-kyun was wondering, and it made him feel most uneasy.

The
same thing happened again soon afterwards. Over the top of a hill, they came
across a small stream:

"Look!"
his father called out, "let's cool our feet in that stream over there
before we go on! Haven't we gone far enough for today?"

Ik-kyun
followed him to the bank of the stream, and there it happened again. Once he
had watched his father take off his socks and dip his feet in the water,
Ik-kyun felt reassured and let his eyes wander until a strange feeling suddenly
came over him; he looked back, there was no sign of his father, who had been
sitting only a few footsteps away!

Ik-kyun
jumped to his feet, rushed to the top of the tallest rock he could see, and was
gazing around, when he heard his father's voice coming from where he had last
seen him:

"Now
what are you up to? Is something wrong?"

Ik-kyun
looked down, and there was his father gazing up at him and rubbing his feet in
the water with both hands.

It
was only after he had experienced the same kind of incident a few more times
that Ik-kyun began vaguely to sense a possible reason for such strange
phenomena. The next day, while they were walking along at the foot of a rocky
hill, Ik-kyun deliberately moved away, watching to see how his father could
disappear like that. His father simply sat down to rest on a slab of rock
jutting out from the slope, but Ik-kyun was only a few steps away before his
shape began to grow hazy. Startled, he continued on a few more paces.

His
father was gone again! But on closer examination, he saw that he was wrong; his
father was undoubtedly still sitting where he had been, but having removed his
hat and gazing skywards at the clouds, he looked exactly like a rock! A rock,
moreover, that had been there for thousands of years and was all overgrown with
green moss! It seemed that he had been unable to see him there because he
blended so perfectly with the natural surroundings.

Then
there was another peculiar and mysterious thing that occurred as they journeyed
on together. It involved his father's poetry. In times past, Ik-kyun had simply
pretended not to notice when his father began to mutter things to himself. He
had guessed it might be poetry, but his father was not addressing anyone in
particular, and since he had not had a proper education Ik-kyun could not make
sense even of those parts he heard. Indeed, the thought that it might have been
this very poetry that had drawn his father away from home provoked in him a
silent revulsion.

One
day, though, when his father began to mutter something he felt differently.
Maybe because of the surprising events of the last few days, he felt that there
must be some kind of out-of-the-ordinary meaning to the muttering. For the
first time in his life, Ik-kyun asked his father about his poetry:

"I
said that flower over there is beautiful."

His
father pointed at a rock face by the side of the road with a vague expression.
When his father raised his finger, there was undoubtedly simply a red cliff
there--but suddenly it seemed that a crimson cuckoo-pint broke through the
stone in full bloom. That was not the only time. Eager to discover more about
the mysterious power of his father's muttering, Ik-kyun began to ask questions
whenever he heard it, and had similar experiences every time.

"That
cloud up there is floating peacefully."

His
father explained, and following his pointing finger he saw a splendid cloud
appear in the hitherto empty sky, finer than any he had ever seen, and float
there quietly.

"I
said those carp are swimming in leisurely style,"

His
father had no sooner said that, than he saw in the water a few carp swimming in
leisurely style near the bank in a spot where a moment before there had been
nothing visible, as if conjured up by his father's pointing finger. When his
father recited something about birds, the most lovely bird would fly out from
somewhere and chirp gaily; when he recited something about the wind, the
coolest of winds would come blowing, drying the sweat on their brows.

After
a while, Ik-kyun began to formulate a vague explanation for these things. His
father's poetry did not really make things appear from nowhere, it simply made
apparent what had been there all the time. But that was the full extent of his
understanding, and to the very end Ik-kyun was unable to figure out why he
always had the impression of things materializing from nowhere.

Once
he had become more observant, Ik-kyun noticed many other inexplicable things.
This was especially the case when his father mingled with other people, in a
market for example. As soon as his father was among people, he stood out as the
shabbiest, weariest old man of all. Like a dead plant in the very middle of a
field full of spring flowers. It was the same when he spoke. The mysterious
power he had when muttering poetry seemed to vanish, so that people could not
understand what he was saying and needed Ik-kyun to interpret for them. It was
unbelievable that such a father had not starved to death before now in the
course of his wanderings.

It
was the sixth day of their journey. Having passed through Kyongsang Province,
they had stopped for the night in a village at the foot of Chuknyong Pass. Up
to that point, Ik-kyun had been full of the idea of bringing his father home;
but suddenly a question struck him: "What is father, really? Am I doing
the right thing in bringing this kind of a father back home?" This
question had slowly formed in Ik-kyun's mind as a result of the last few days'
events.

People
had told him that his father was a poet. But for Ik-kyun as a child, a poem
meant the same as a curse. Sometimes they had called his father a
"wanderer," but they were people whose heads and bodies were
completely out of all proportion.

To
Ik-kyun, who had trained himself since earliest childhood to give more weight
to the real side of things, that name meant nothing more than "a
beggar." To rescue his father from those two misfortunes had been
Ik-kyun's sole intention in setting out to accomplish his simple filial duty.
It was far removed from his deep care for his lonely mother, but marked by the
same kind of sincerity.

At
the time of his first encounter with his father, Ik-kyun had already begun to
feel some doubt as to whether his father's situation was really a misfortune or
a curse. His reluctance to return to his family seemed to spring from a fear of
loosing what he had so far enjoyed; Ik-kyun considered that pleasure less as
something positive than as a passive shunning of responsibility on his father's
part, all those responsibilities, ranging from productivity, earning a living,
and bringing up a family to the educated man's functions in society at large,
that his father had rejected from early on. Therefore he reckoned that if his
father was afraid of something, it must be of questions about the
responsibilities he had shunned in the past, responsibilities that he would
necessarily have to assume on returning home now.

Despite
the two subterfuges his father had used to escape from him, Ik-kyun's
intentions had not changed much. If there was any change at all, it was by a
sense that he was not only afraid but bewitched. He reckoned that his father
was being led by that kind of inscrutable force that necessarily accompanies
misfortunes and curses, great or small.

Around
the fifth day, however, Ik-kyun's heart began to feel burdened and oppressed at
the sight of his father, as he slowly realized that he was not bewitched at
all, but was actually enjoying himself. Would he be able to make clouds move
and flowers bloom, once back in his own shabby room with its thatched roof?
Would he still be able to live lofty and indifferent like some old pine tree or
a moss-covered rock, once supported by the labours of Ik-kyun, his wife, and mother,
and doing his own share of trivial housekeeping chores? Would his father still
be able to be a poet, in the midst of cold stares directed at an old failure
come home to prepare for death, or surrounded by a throng of third-rate poets
drawn like moths around a light to the faded name of someone who in youth had
been famous? Would he still be able to be a poet?

Deep
in such thoughts, Ik-kyun lay next to his father, who had been snoring since
early in the evening, but he could not get to sleep. Their shared blood
inevitably induced an understanding of a higher kind than any that his little
learning could bestow, and Ik-kyun found himself driven into an abrupt crisis
of hesitation.

All
the while, his father kept snoring. As the night wore on and the murmured
whispers of the innkeeper and his wife in their room finally ceased, all fell
silent. Amidst the stillness, Ik-kyun too laid aside his thoughts and, without
realizing it, fell asleep.

How
much time passed? Ik-kyun had scarcely dozed off when he opened his eyes to a
strange sense of emptiness. There was nobody lying beside him, while he could
hear somebody making a rustling noise in the far corner of the room. It must be
father, he intuitively felt. He must be packing up his hat and coat, that
Ik-kyun had not bothered to hide that night.

For
some reason, Ik-kyun did not want to sit up. Rather, "At last. . ."
an unidentifiable feeling of resignation first rose in him, then all the energy
drained from his body. Besides, the returning thoughts of the previous hours
neutralized the resolve with which he had left home, and which had been
confirmed when he first found him.

Meanwhile
father's packing seemed to be complete, he moved towards the door. "Now I
must get up. . ." Ik-kyun felt a secret anxiety but still he could not
make his body rise from its place. Suddenly his father's movements stopped.

Though
it was pitch dark, Ik-kyun felt a kind of sunny warmth on his face for a while.
"Father's looking down at me!" he thought, and he shut his eyes
furtively, as if to escape his father's unseen gaze.

When
Ik-kyun opened his eyes again, it was because he heard the door opening. In the
pale light of the waning moon outside, he could see his father's bent
silhouette as he left the room, wearing his bamboo hat. Before he stepped down
onto the garden path, his father turned and glanced back, as if he knew that
his son was awake.

When
Ik-kyun finally stood up, gathering all his strength to break the mysterious
spell that had paralysed him, the sound of his father's footsteps in the garden
was dying away. Seized with a sudden sense of urgency, Ik-kyun scrambled to the
doorway and, hanging onto it, he called out:

"Father!"

But
it was as if his voice had been silenced by the sight of his father's back, and
no sound issued from his lips. The man moving away in the glimmering darkness
was not his father. He was a poet, and nothing else. A poet tied down by
nothing in the whole world. His father moved beyond the brushwood gate of the
inn and stepped on to the grassy forest trail; at that very moment he vanished
completely. "Has he turned into a tree? Or a rock? Or a white brier rose?
Or the early morning mist now beginning to thicken . . . ?" As those
thoughts came to him, Ik-kyun quickly changed his still unspoken words of
protest into a blessing:

"Farewell.
May you ever find peace and plenty in your poetry."

That
was father and son's last parting in this world.

34.

Now,
what remains to be told? His death a few years later? Ik-kyun's admirable sense
of filial duty in moving his father's bones from somewhere down in Cholla
Province to a tomb at Youngwol in Kangwon Province? The quarrels among people
of later generations about what they selectively remember in the things he
showed? All useless. What we set out to trace was one man's life as a poet; now
that quest is over.

What
we have seen through Ik-kyun's eyes is a man fulfilled as a poet; as was
mentioned earlier, any further search by means of words, spoken or written, is
pointless.

His
death, too, which followed soon after? Well, to end on a blunt note: a dead
poet is no poet.

Notes

The
story told by Yi Mun-yol follows the generally accepted outline of the life of
Kim Pyong-yon (also written Pyong-nyon) that is mainly known thanks to the work
of Yi Ung-su, who spent many years in his youth in the 1920s gathering the
poems as well as oral anecdotes about him. These he published during the 1930s
and 1940s. One of the main sources of his knowledge seems to have been the
poet's grandson who was an old man in the 1920s.

The
narrator in the novel disingenuously assumes a knowledge of this traditional
material in the reader. The names of the poet's sons are found in the legends,
as is the figure of Kim Song-su, and the story of how Ik-kyun several times
tried to bring his ageing father home. The novel leaves Kim An-gun, the poet's
father, unnamed.

The
poet's nickname in Korean, Kim Sakkat, "Kim the bamboo hat" is
sometimes rendered in Chinese characters as Kim Rip, Kim Tae-rip,
Kim Sa-rip. The large hat in question was worn to keep off the rain or
sunshine, and was made either of thin strips of bamboo or of various kinds of
reed-like plants.

Chapter 1.

"Men's quarters... women's quarters... guest
rooms"

Until
the early 20th century the women of Korea were normally confined to the house;
only the men walked abroad in daylight. Within the home of any family wealthy
enough to occupy more than a wretched hovel, the sexes were segregated too,
from the age of six. The menfolk of the higher classes would spend most of
their time in the sarang-chae or sarang-pang, that might be one
room or a whole separate building, where they would also entertain and offer
lodging to guests. Unmarried youths would live there once they could be
separated from their mothers. Marriage usually occurred at the age of 13 for
boys and 15-16 for girls.

"no longer a serf"

The
way in which members of the lowest classes were bondsmen to the rich members of
the yangban caste was not quite the same as that found in western
feudalism, but the relationship was so intense that the word here translated as
"serf" is very often translated as "slave" since such
people could be given away as gifts, and might be severely punished if they ran
away.

Chapter 8

"Elementary Learning"

"Elementary
Learning" is the title of a primer for schoolboys compiled in Sung China
by Chu Hsi in 1189 and known in Chinese as Hsiao-hsüeh, in Korean as So-hak.
It contains the basic rules for personal behaviour and social morality,
including filial piety, and was one of the basic school text-books used to
inculcate the form of Neo-Confucianism adopted by the founders of the Choson
Dynasty.

Chapter 9

"The royal envoy to Pekin"

Korea
was for centuries in a relationship of suzerainty to China and this was recognized
by the sending of an annual embassy bearing tribute.

Chapter 10

"Schools and Confucian centres"

As
is clear from the text, many poor scholars opened schools in remote villages,
as the only acceptable way by which they could earn a living. There were also
Confucian shrines, erected by local communities in memory of Confucius or of
some famed scholar, at which lessons were taught.

Chapter 11

"Examinations"

The system of government service examinations,
introduced into Korea from China in 958, was originally designed to enable any
talented young man from even a humble class to enter the royal administration.
In Choson Dynasty Korea (1392-1910), the candidates were increasingly limited
to those born into yangban families.

The
word yangban is the common expression for those families forming the
ruling caste in Korea; one belonged to the category by birth. The word really
means "both sections" since the two careers open to men from such
families were the civil service and the military. Of the two, the civil service
was far more highly esteemed.

As
the text indicates, there were two stages in the preliminary, licenciate stage
of the literary examination, one "literary" and one
"classical," after which a far smaller number of candidates went on
to take the main examination which opened the doors to the higher echelons.

The
population of the northwestern area gained such a reputation for rebellion that
no one from that region was permitted to take the examination or enter royal
service, a fact that is mentioned later, in chapter 14, when the poet meets the
scholar Noh Jin who comes from that province. It was also one of the factors
underlying the revolt in that area led by Hong Kyong-rae in 1811-12.

"The gentleman class"

Korea
had no aristocracy in the western sense, but the strong awareness of family
identity meant that a person's family origin counted for much. The class of yangban
(here translated "gentleman class") alone had access to the higher
positions in society. Even when penniless, a self-respecting yangban
would never work with his hands. The word translated in the text
"gentleman-scholar" (sonbi) was applied to a member of the yangban
class who had received a basic education, and who had taken or hoped to take
the government service examination. The term kunja was used to designate
one of the great ideals of Confucian society, the "true gentleman" or
"man of virtue" who had attained wisdom through study and
self-discipline.

"The Nine Classics"

Since
Han China, five Classics have been recognized as essential texts for Confucian
teaching. They are: (a) The Spring and Autumn Annals (Ch'un-ch'iu);
(b) The Book of Odes (or of Poetry) (Shih-ching); (c) The
Book of Documents (Shu-ching); (d) The Record (or Book)
of Rites (Li-ching); (e) The Book of Changes (I-ching).
These texts developed independantly of Confucianism but were taken into it as
expressions of the six fundamental disciplines, music alone not being the
subject of a surviving classic.

In
Sung China these canonical texts were supplemented, or even superseded, by the
previously obscure "Four Books" (ssu-shu) or "Four
Classics"that were at the
heart of much of later Confucianism: (a) The Analects (Lun-yü);
(b) The Great Learning (Ta-hsüeh); (c) The Doctrine of the
Mean (Chung-yung); (d) Mencius (Meng-tzu).

"The "Songs of the Great T'ang" of King
Yao and the "Songs of the South Wind" by King Shun"

Yao
and Shun are the names of legendary kings at the very beginning of Chinese
history according to the Yao dian that forms the first part of the
"Book of Documents" ("Book of History" or Shu-ching)
that Confucius is said to have edited. Yao (2357- 2255 BC.) is recorded as a
model of virtuous rule, king first of T'ao then of T'ang. After a long rule he
abdicated in favour of Shun, his son-in-law.

Shun
(2317-2208 BC.) is at the head of the list of Twenty-Four Examples of Filial
Piety for the way in which he responded to his father's attempts to kill him, a
story referred to in Chapter 14. He is proverbially the model of the wise
ruler, his inner powers being such that he had only to sit on the throne for
the kingdom to enjoy peace and prosperity.

The
poems referred to here are sections of the Book of Odes (Shih-ching)
sometimes attributed in commentaries to Yao and Shun themselves, although they
can hardly be so early.

"The Chien-an and Zheng-shi Eras" etc

The
references are to Chinese history: the Chien-an and Zheng-shi Eras cover A.D.
196-220, and 240-249 respectively.

Western Chin existed from 265 until 317, it was followed
by Eastern Chin (317-420). The T'ang (618-906) and Sung (960-1279) Dynasties
are particularly high moments for Chinese poetry.

"The Book of Odes"

One of the Five Classics, the Book of
Odes, or of Songs, also called the Classic of Poetry, contains 305 lyrics probably
mostly written between 1000 and 600 BC..

"The Practical Learning"

In
reaction against the rigid ideology of Neo-Confucianism, open-minded Korean
scholars from the 17th century onward began to look for new solutions to
problems of practical living. One important source of inspiration for them was
the knowledge of western science and technology brought to China and translated
into Chinese by the Jesuit missionaries led by Matteo Ricci.

Chapter 12

"Catholicism"

One
of the main works written by Matteo Ricci in Chinese was a presentation of the
teachings of the Catholic Church in terms adapted from the Chinese
philosophical and religious traditions. This work, and others of a similar
kind, entered Korea in the seventeenth century and were particularly
influential in the later years of the 18th century, when several talented young
scholars were converted to Catholicism by studying them. One of them went to
Beijing to receive baptism in 1784 and this is regarded as the beginning of
modern Korean Catholic history.

"Yi Sun Shin"

The
military leader Yi Sun Shin (1545-1598) is particularly revered for his
invention of the first armoured battleship, the so-called gobok-son or
"turtle ship," thanks to which Korea was able to repel the Japanese
invasions of 1592-8.

Chapter 14

"Hong Kyong-rae"

The
revolt led by Hyong Kyong-rae (1780-1812), together with such figures as Kim
Chang-si, was centred in the north-western Pyong-an Province. In the early
stages a gold-mining operation was set up in Dabok to give cover to their
military preparations; young men went there to be trained and it became the
head-quarters of the whole uprising. It may be helpful to recall the main
events of the 1811 uprising as they were summarised in Chapter 7:

"When
he was four years old his grandfather, Kim Ik-sun, who was in charge of the
garrison at Sonchon, was captured by the rebel army led by Hong Kyong-rae and
surrendered to them. That was in the last month of the eleventh year of king
Sunjo, 1811. In the first month of the following year, Sonchon was recaptured
by government forces and Kim Ik-sun, who had remained in Hong Kyong-rae's camp,
was taken prisoner again, this time as a traitor, by the government army. Kim
Ik-sun was transferred to prison and in the third month of that year he was
drawn and quartered."

To
this need only be added that the authorities felt deeply threatened by such
incidents, which were usually fuelled by popular resentment at the way corrupt
officials exploited them, imposing harsh taxes even at times when there was not
enough to eat. The authorities did nothing to tackle the underlying problems
but simply imposed terrible punishments on those rebels they could capture.
They also set out to glorify Chong Shi, the magistrate at Kasan, in the
northern region of Pyongan Province, where the revolt first broke out, since he
had been killed while fighting the rebels.

During
the visit the poet makes to Dabok Village in Chapter 26, we learn more about
why Chong Shi could have expected no mercy if he had surrendered, on account of
his corrupt administration and the personal wrong he had done to Yi Hi-jo, the
rebel commander-in-chief. There are also references to the terrible end of the
revolt in that chapter; the remaining rebels, with their families, took refuge
in the fortress at Chongju and made a heroic last stand until at last they were
forced to surrender in the fourth month of 1812. The women and small children
were spared, but thousands of men and boys were massacred by the government
forces.

"A poetry competition"

This
kind of event used to form a regular part of the cultural life of Choson
Dynasty Korea. The paek-il-jang was a poetry-writing competition
organised to encourage local scholars in their studies in preparation for the
government-service examination.

Poem: "Kim
Ik-sun..."

The
Chinese names mentioned in this poem are mostly self-explanatory references to
stories found in the Chinese classics:

Li
Ling was a military man of the Han Dynasty who was defeated and captured during
an expedition into Hsiung-nu territory in 99 B.C.. He did not commit suicide as
was expected in such situations and the Han court turned against him, with the
exception of the great historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who defied the emperor by
speaking in his favour. As a result, Ssu-ma Ch'ien was punished by castration,
instead of death, which allowed him to complete his great historical chronicle Shih-chi.

Yue
Fei (1103-1141) was a poet and general of the Southern Sung who rose from a
very humble peasant background to become the head of the army. He was
imprisoned and beheaded in order to achieve a shameful peace. He was
posthumously reinstated and enshrined as a patron of national defense and a
paragon of loyalty. He is the subject of many plays and novels.

The
Chou Dynasty lasted from 1122 BC. until 249 BC..Lu Zhong-lian is celebrated as an orator, a man of high
integrity and courage of that period.

Chu-ko
Liang (181-234) was the main strategist of Liu Pei, who was the rightful
claimant of the imperial Han throne during the Three Kingdoms period, when he
fought in vain against the kingdoms of Wu and Wei in the third century. In the
novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," he is presented as the
idealisation of wisdom.

Boyi
and Shuji were brothers living during the Yin Dynasty (1765-1122 BC.) who,
learning that the king of Chou was about to attack, withdrew into the mountains
determined to resist, but they were unable to survive on a diet of bracken and
died.

Chapter 18

In
this chapter there are references to a number of historical personages, most of
them sufficiently identified in the text. Shin Sok-wu, the author of the Haejang
Anthology (Haejang-chip), has left almost the only contemporary
account of the poet in the stories about "Kim Tae-rip" (the Chinese
characters for "sakkat") that form part of the thirteenth
volume of the Anthology.

Poem: "This
river has no red cliffs"

The
"red cliffs" seem to be a reference to a place of this name (ch'ih-pi)
on the Yangtze River in Hupei that was the site of a battle during the Three
Kingdoms period; the great Sung Dynasty poet Su Tung-p'o (Su Shih) (1037-1101)
wrote about the place while in exile there.

Hsin-feng
is the name of a Chinese town mentioned in works of the Han Dynasty.

Hsiang
Yü lived in the years around 200 B.C. and was a prominent warrior in the Han
Dynasty, much is written in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih-chi ("Records of
the Grand Historian") about him. Su Ch'in was a noted strategist and
proverbially skillful speaker of the Warring Kingdoms Period of Chinese history.

Chapter 19

"Kim
Chwa-gun"

Kim
Chwa-gun (1797-1869) rose to positions of power and influence in the court
during the reign of King Ch'ol-jong (1849-63). His father, Kim Cho-sun
(1765-1831), was even more powerful on account of his daughter's marriage to
King Sun-jo.

Chapter 21

"The Diamond
Mountains"

Situated
in the northern part of Kangwon Province, in what is now North Korea, Kumgang-san
("Diamond Mountain" but the plural form has become standard usage in
English) is one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. Although its
highest peak, Piro Peak, is only 1638 metres high, the mountain is striking for
its jagged skyline of rocky crags and peaks, traditionally numbered at twelve
thousand. The mountain's many streams tumble over hundreds of waterfalls; in
previous times the mountain contained 108 Buddhist temples and was home to
hundreds if not thousands of hermits. Its beauty is legendary, although Korean
pragmatism is shown in the best-known saying associated with it, to the effect
that "even the Diamond Mountains should be viewed only after you have
eaten."

Chapter 22

"Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu"

These
are two great Taoist writers, although their historical identity is uncertain.
Lao-tzu is the assumed author of the work called Tao Te Ching.

Chapter 27

Poem: "Green
pines..."

This
seven-syllable poem mixes Chinese and Korean characters; the first two
syllables and the last syllable in each line are Chinese, the four central
characters are written in the vernacular.

This
represents a deviation from the classical norm. In the traditional forms of
poetry, the vernacular writing system (On-mun) was not allowed. Poems
might only be written in Chinese characters. Here, the first two Chinese
characters are a subject noun, the last character functions as a verb; the
Korean words in the middle are adverbs. If the poet had tried to represent the
adverbial expression in Chinese, he could not have written a seven-syllable
line.

This
form had no impact on poets of following generations.

"The Enlightenment
Period"

This term refers to the period when the
Korean "Hermit Kingdom" began to establish diplomatic and commercial
relations with the outside world and started to adopt various Western models
for the modernisation of the country. It began in about 1876 and continued
until the 1920s. In 1910 Korea ceased to exist as an independent kingdom, being
annexed by Japan.

In
the field of literature, the country was subject to strong influence from the
West through Japanese translations of the western classics and other more
recent works. The young writers of the time tried to sever themselves from the
Chinese literary tradition and adopted western literary conventions.

Poem: "The
sickle"

This
too is a poem in which Chinese and Korean characters are combined. At the end
of each line comes the two-syllable name of one of the letters in the Korean
alphabet.

The
first line's character is ___ which is traditionally seen as having the shape
of a famer's sickle. The character in the second line is ___, obviously similar
to the ring in an ox's nose. The character ___ has the same shape as a Chinese
ideogram signifying the human body. Finally, if a dot is added to the Korean
character ___, it becomes the Chinese ideogram meaning death.

"The Tonghak
Movement"

This
was a politico-religious revolt against the central government which started in
the southwestern region of the country in 1894. Originally the Tonghak, or
"Eastern Learning" was founded in 1860 by Choi Je-wu as a religious
movement designed to purify society from within, repulsing foreign influences.
It was a syncretistic blend of Confucicanism, Buddhism, and Taoism, designed to
offer an alternative to the spreading Catholic religion.

After
Choi Je-wu was executed in 1863, the movement spread in a haphazard way until
it was given new momentum by Choi Si-hyong, who became its leader in 1884. The
uprising of 1894 was defeated by government troops after about a year, but not
before the Japanese and Chinese governments had sent in troops. Their ostensible
aim was to protect their own citizens residing in the country, but behind this
was a desire to gain control of the Korean Peninsula, which had become the
centre of international power-struggles also involving Russia and the European
powers.

This
confrontation led to the Sino-Japanese War which ended in the victory of the
Japanese forces, which in turn prepared the ground for the final Japanese
annexation of the country in 1910.

Chapter 28

"Anthology of
Classical Poetry"

The
term used is the title of a Chinese anthology, the Shih Wen Lei Chu, 236
volumes of historical records and poetry that were completed in 1246.

Chapter 29

Poem: "Savage
lands..."

The same five
Chinese characters can be read in all these different ways because of the
absence of grammatical elements in the Chinese language and because the same
character happens to mean both "savage" and "how."

Chapter 32

The
revolutionary poems in this chapter, unlike the poems quoted previously, are
not part of the works traditionally ascribed to the poet. They are composed by
Yi Mun-yol in conscious imitation of radical "workers' poems" written
in recent years in South Korea or of the militant songs of the North Korean
regime.